Match engine marketing

ABSTRACT

Enabling advertisers using a computer network such as the Internet and a match engine to submit their offerings to product, service, benefit seeking entities. In some embodiments, a database having accounts for the providers is made available. Accounts contain contact and billing information for an advertiser; and at least one offering having at least a description, a criteria set comprising one or more criterion factors, and a bid amount. An advertiser influences a position of an offering in the advertiser&#39;s account by first selecting offering relevant criteria. The advertiser enters the criteria and the description into a listing; influencing at least in part the position for the listing within a results page through an online bidding process. This results page is generated in response to a seeking entity query of the match engine. Pay for performance demographic, geographic, psychographic criteria/characteristics targeted directly advertising (frictionless advertising) is enabled.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application is a Non-Provisional Continuation applicationwhich claims priority benefit from U.S. Non-Provisional Continuationapplication Ser. No. 13/694,192; filed Nov. 5, 2012 and entitled MatchEngine Marketing; which claims priority benefit from U.S.Non-Provisional application Ser. No. 12/925,615; now U.S. Pat. No.8,341,020 (issued on Dec. 25, 2012); filed Oct. 25, 2010 and entitledMatch Engine Marketing; which claims priority benefit from U.S.Non-Provisional application Ser. No. 11/250,908; now U.S. Pat. No.7,904,337 (issued on Mar. 8, 2011); filed Oct. 13, 2005 and entitledMatch Engine Marketing; which claims priority benefit from U.S.Provisional Application No. 60/619,987 filed Oct. 19, 2004 and entitledMatch Engine Marketing. The disclosures of all of the above are herebyincorporated by reference in their entirety for all purposes. SteveMorsa is the sole inventor of all of the above.

TRADEMARK REFERENCE

MATCH ENGINE MARKETING and PAID MATCH are trademarks of the inventor.All rights reserved.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

A portion of this patent document contains material which is subject tocopyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to thefacsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent or patent disclosure asit appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records,but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.

ABSTRACT NOTICE

As it is an abstract only and therefore in no way exhaustive of thepresent inventions numerous possible forms and embodiments, it is to beunderstood that the present inventions Abstract is not intended to, andshould accordingly not be used to, either limit the scope of the claimsor to limit the invention to any particular embodiment(s) or to (a)precise form(s).

TECHNICAL FIELD

This invention relates generally to the field of advertising, and inparticular to the field of matching advertisers with entities viacomputer networks.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The transfer of information over computer networks has become anincreasingly important means by which institutions, corporations, andindividuals do business. Computer networks have grown over the yearsfrom independent and isolated entities established to serve the needs ofa single group into vast internets which interconnect disparate physicalnetworks and allow them to function as a coordinated system. Currently,the largest computer network in existence is the Internet. The Internetis a worldwide interconnection of computer networks that communicateusing a common protocol. Millions of computers, from low end personalcomputers to high end super computers, are connected to the Internet.

The Internet has emerged as a large community of electronicallyconnected users located around the world who readily and regularlyexchange significant amounts of information. The Internet continues toserve its original purposes of providing for access to and exchange ofinformation among government agencies, laboratories, and universitiesfor research and education. In addition, the Internet has evolved toserve a variety of interests and forums that extend beyond its originalgoals. In particular, the Internet is rapidly transforming into a globalelectronic marketplace of goods and services as well as of ideas andinformation.

Current paradigms for generating web site traffic, such as banneradvertising, follow traditional advertising paradigms and fail toutilize the unique attributes of the Internet. In the banner advertisingmodel, web site promoters seeking to promote and increase their webexposure often purchase space on the pages of popular commercial websites. The web site promoters usually fill this space with a colorfulgraphic, known as a banner, advertising their own web site. The bannermay act a hyperlink a visitor may click on to access the site. Liketraditional advertising, banner advertising on the Internet is typicallypriced on an impression basis with advertisers paying for exposures topotential consumers. Banners may be displayed at every page access, or,on search engines, may be targeted to search terms. Nonetheless,impression-based advertising inefficiently exploits the Internet'sdirect marketing potential, as the click-through rate, the rate ofconsumer visits a banner generates to the destination site, may be quitelow. Web site promoters are therefore paying for exposure to manyconsumers who are not interested in the product or service beingpromoted, as most visitors to a web site seek specific information andmay not be interested in the information announced in the banner.Likewise, the banner often fails to reach interested individuals, sincethe banner is not generally searchable by search engines and theinterested persons may not know where on the web to view the banner.

Pay for placement database search systems have been developed in whichadvertisers bid on the placement of their listings in search resultsreturned to a searcher in response to a world wide web query from asearcher. Each advertiser's listing includes a search term and a bidamount. In some embodiments, each advertiser's listing includes a title,descriptive text and a clickable hyperlink or uniform resource locator(URL). The database of search listings stores many such listings, eachassociated with an advertiser. Upon receipt of the query, the databaseis searched and listings having a search term matching the query areformatted for display to the searcher as search results.

The advertisers adjust their bids or bid amounts to control the positionat which their search listings are presented in the search results. Thepay for placement system places search listings having higher-valuedbids higher or closer to the top of the search listings. Other rules maybe applied as well when positioning search listings.

For example, a more senior listing may be positioned or ranked higherthan a junior listing for the same search term and same bid.Higher-ranked listings are seen by more searchers and are more likely tobe clicked, producing traffic of potential customers to an advertiser'sweb site.

The searcher is presented with search listings based at least in part onthe bid amounts. The search listings may extend over several screens orpages when formatted for viewing. As a result, higher positioned searchlistings are much more likely to be seen by the searcher. Moreover, somepay for placement systems have affiliate agreements whereby some oftheir highest-bidded search listings are presented to searchers usingother general purpose search engines. Because of these affiliateagreements and similar arrangements, an advertiser's web site, if bidhighly enough, may today be seen by as many as seventy-five percent ofInternet users.

An advertiser wishing to attract searchers to his web site as potentialcustomers for the advertiser's goods hand services thus has an incentiveto position his search listing relatively high in the search results. Anadvertiser may enter bids on many search terms. For search terms whichare closely related to the content of the advertiser's web site, theadvertiser might place relatively large bids. For less closely relatedsearch terms, the advertiser might place smaller bids. A number ofstrategies have been developed by advertisers to increase traffic toadvertiser web sites in this manner.

Similarly, pay for placement search systems have developed tools to helpthe advertisers manage their bids and attract traffic. OvertureServices, Inc., (now a division of Yahoo) operating a system atwww.overture.com; and Google, at www.google.com, have presentedadvertisers with a standard bidding page accessible over the world wideweb. The standard bidding page allows an advertiser to log in, displayand edit all current search listings and review bids. Today, a number ofother competitors including FindWhat also offer such pay for placementsystems.

Despite their current popularity, however, such conventional pay forplacement systems actually have a surprising number of major drawbacks.First, as a result of these systems quickly expanding recognition anduse since their development in the late 1990's, combined with theirhaving an effective limit on the number of economically viable searchterms upon which advertisers are willing to bid on, such systems growthrate is now predicted to decline precipitously in the years to come. Dueto the popularity of and resultant often rabid bidding for the mosteffective and responsive search terms, many companies—especially smallerones—are starting to drop out of such systems due to this growing lackof affordability. In fact, some experts now believe that in the years tocome, as has been the case with broadcast television, only largercompanies, often bidding on 100's or even 1,000's of search terms each,will be able to even afford to participate in such systems at all.

Second, as is well known in this “search engine marketing” [SEM]industry, despite these systems best efforts, attempting to matchadvertisements to search terms is inherently problematic when workingwithin an unstructured environment like the Internet. Because searchengines use at least in part impersonal algorithms, link analysis, andother automated methodologies to locate and present search—andadvertising—results, the delivery of irrelevant or minimal-relevancyadvertisements to the searcher is all too common. Indeed, attempting todiscern searchers intent from the search terms they use is oftencharacterized as being akin to trying to read their minds.

A third problem with these systems is their inability to identify thosemany products, services, and benefits the searchers know nothing aboutyet for which they may—and do—qualify to obtain, use, and benefit from.While knowing ones intent is great (if and when you can discern it),basing (so called) targeted advertising presentations on just thatfactor shortchanges both entities and the provider/advertisers. Withsuch “targeted by intent only” advertising systems, it's very much acase of “if only you knew how much you don't know.”

A fourth problem is the artificial limit such systems, by theirstructural nature, place on the number of advertisers who caneffectively obtain placement—and therefore visibility of theiradvertising—based on each search term. People conduct searches becausethey are looking for information of some type from any web site orsource which might have it; and, they are not normally very patientabout getting it. Numerous studies have shown that few people will viewmore that the first two or three pages of search results before eitherchanging the search terms and trying again; or trying their search atone or more of the many other readily available search engines. Thismeans that—because computer screens and therefore web pages are oflimited physical/viewable size, there's only a precious few positions ofany marketing value for advertisers to bid on if they expect their adsto even be seen by the searcher (or by worthwhile numbers of searchers),much less clicked on and forwarded to the advertisers web site for apotential purchase to take place.

Relatedly, because people conducting searches usually are doing so toquickly gather what they consider to be unbiased (and preferablyadvertising-free) information, and not to look at a bunch of ads; ifthey don't find the information they're actually looking for in thefirst few pages, as stated, they don't often stick around scrollingthrough pages and pages of ads stuck along the side of or amongst whatto them is irrelevant content. If they don't quickly see what they'relooking for in the first few pages, anything that follows ishistory—including any remaining ads.

A little talked about fifth problem with search engine marketing systemsis “click fraud;” where clicks on the various displayed paid listingsare executed either manually or via automated systems (some now verysophisticated in their operation) not due to an interest in the productor service advertised, but in order to inflict financial pain ontargeted advertisers (often by their competitors, who are unfortunatelyable to easily identify the search terms their competition is payingfor) and/or in order to gain illegal commissions for the entities (ortheir agents) perpetrating these frauds. Overseas “click fraud rings”have even recently sprung up to take advantage of this vulnerability.Some estimates place such fraud as high as 10-20% or more of all “hits”on the most valuable search terms and/or within the most competitiveindustry sectors. Such fraud; considered by many in the field to be farmore widespread than is readily admitted to by the providers of suchsystems; may reportedly be costing many advertisers up to $100's to 10'sof $1,000's of dollars a month or more.

A sixth problem with such systems is their great difficulty indelivering search results—and therefore advertisers—who aregeographically local to individual searchers. While at this time SEM hasbecome a five-billion dollar/year industry, various estimates place thetotal potential SEM market to be perhaps three-to-five times thisamount; if only locally-based vendors were able to target their productsand services only to those people within reasonable driving distance oftheir places of business. It doesn't do “Joe's Plumbing” any good to beone of the paying advertisers on a search term such as “plumbing,” whenonly a minuscule percentage of “plumbing” searchers are within Joe'sgeographic service area, and therefore able to take advantage of hisservices.

A seventh problem with SEM systems is their inherently complicated,esoteric nature. While sophisticated product and service providershave—though usually with the assistance of experts in the field—readilyembraced these systems, precious few of the many millions of smallercompanies and professional practices have done so. Already familiar—andcomfortable—with such media as yellow pages, newspapers, direct mail;perhaps even radio and TV; they've understandably shown little interestto date in putting complicated SEM (or the related search engineoptimization [SEO]) techniques and methodologies to work in theirbusinesses—even as much additional profit doing so could mean to them.The whole complicated Internet advertising business leaves them lost andconfused. As the current conventional SEM advertising systems continueto become more and more complicated as the years go on, thissmall-company/business disconnect only continues to grow worse.

These paid search systems eighth problem is centered around trademarkinfringement and related intellectual property (IP) issues. An importantpercentage of the words and phrases targeted by advertisers utilizingSEM systems are actually the legal product, service, and business-nametrademarks of many 100's to 1,000's of companies around the world whoare for the most part understandingly very displeased and “up in arms”over the use of their intellectual property by competitors and othersprofiting from their well-known creations. Though recent indications arethat this issue may be reaching a conclusion and resolution generallyfavorable to those providing and utilizing such SEM systems within theUS; as recently illustrated by the French court decision against one ofthe world's largest paid search providers, such favorable outcomes maybe few and far between when it comes to other countries; most of whichregularly demonstrate a greater propensity for “protecting” theirestablished companies against real or perceived interlopers and“outsiders” than does the US.

Thus, search engine marketing (SEM) and other traditional paradigms ofadvertising fail both to provide maximized results to 10's of millionsof businesses/advertisers, while further failing to deliver the up to100's of little- or un-known yet valuable and useful, relevant, targetedproduct, service, and benefit opportunities and information tointerested parties in a cost-effective manner. Internet advertising doneright can offer a level of targetability, interactivity, measurability,and competitive privacy not generally available from other media. Withthe proper tools, technologies, and methodologies; Internet advertisershave the ability to quickly, easily, affordably, and confidentiallytarget their messages to specific groups of consumers and receive promptfeedback as to the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns.

Ideally, web site promoters should be able to control their placement inmatch result listings so that their listings are prominent in matchrequests that are relevant to the content of their web site and/or theirofferings. The match engine functionality of the Internet (i.e.GovBenefits.gov and BenefitsCheckUp.org) needs to be focused in a newdirection to facilitate an on-line marketplace which offers consumersand other entities quick, easy and relevant match results whileproviding Internet advertisers and promoters of all sizes and revenueswith a cost-effective way to target consumers. A consumer utilizing amatch engine that facilitates this on-line marketplace will findcompanies, businesses, government and non-profit agencies, etc thatoffer the products, services, benefits and information that the consumeris seeking. In this on-line marketplace, companies selling or offeringproducts, services, benefits, or information bid in an open auctionenvironment for positions on a match result list generated by anInternet match engine.

Since advertisers must pay for each click-through referral generatedthrough the match result lists generated by the match engine,advertisers have an incentive to select and bid on those match criteria(characteristics) which are most relevant to their web site andofferings. The higher an advertiser's position on a match result list,the higher likelihood of a “referral;” that is, the higher thelikelihood that a consumer will be referred to the advertiser's website/offerings through the match result list.

Therefore; it would be desirable then to provide a system and methodwhich would readily reduce/mitigate/overcome the many substantialdrawbacks, deficiencies, and shortcomings of the present conventionaladvertising paradigms.

Advantages

Accordingly, the present invention may in one or more of its variousembodiments have one or more of the following advantages:

The providing of a more level playing field where individuals,companies, businesses, and professional practices of all types, sizes,industries, and revenues may more quickly, easily, and affordablycompete more equally among and between themselves for customers andclients.

The providing of a system and method where promoters may have theirchoice of potentially up to millions of different targeted criteriacombinations from which to target their offerings to.

The providing of a system and method where up to 100's or more ofadvertisers at one time may be more effectively and profitably displayedto; viewed by, and have their web sites visited (and/or be otherwisecontacted) by these motivated, highly-interested product, service,benefit, and information seekers.

The creation of a new system of advertising where advertisers target themost interested consumers and entities by participating in a free marketwhich attaches a monetary cost for an advertiser's listing in a matchresult list generated using advertiser-selected criteria.

The providing to product, service, benefit, and information seekingentities with products, services, benefits, and information individuallytailored and specifically targeted to their demographic, geographic,psychographic factors (collectively; multigraphics).

The providing of a system and method where benefit providers may morequickly, easily, and affordably identify potential recipients for whomto present their must-qualify-for-in-order-to-receive benefits andbenefit programs.

The providing of a system and method for enabling promoters to influencea position on a match result list generated by a match engine for aspecified set of criteria.

The providing of a system and method for enabling promoters to specifycriteria to the match engine so as to target their match result listplacement to the match queries most relevant to their business/offer.

The providing of a system and method for enabling promoters to examinetheir current criteria and placement couplings online and to makesubstantially instantaneous changes to their selected criteria,placements, and web site titles and descriptions.

The providing to promoters a match engine that permits such promoters toinfluence a higher or lower placement in a match result list via acontinuous, competitive online bidding process.

The providing of a cost-effective method of Internet advertising wherethe web site promoter is charged in direct proportion to the number ofactual visits generated by the match engine.

The allowing of a web site promoter to control a title or descriptionassociated with the promoters listing in a match result list generatedby the match engine.

The providing of a pay-per-click (PPC) system with reduced click fraudand concurrent increased advertiser competitive privacy by making moredifficult both the identification of any particular advertiser(s) aswell as their advertisement(s).

The reduction and/or possible elimination of the real or perceived needand/or desire of many PPC advertisers to bid on other companiestrademarked products and services in order to reach their desiredprospects.

The enabling of the identification of products, services, and benefitswhich are available to an entity yet which entity would otherwise havelittle or no knowledge of.

The enabling of less sophisticated product and service providers to alsomake use of Internet based pay-for-performance advertising due to thepresent invention being a more quickly and easily understood andutilized PPC system.

The enabling of local companies/businesses to more easilypay-for-performance PPC advertise to only those prospects located and/oroperating within the geographic areas in which thesecompanies/businesses choose to provide their products and services.

The frictionless advertising disintermediation of traditionaladvertising vehicles including one or more of the following: Newspapers,Magazines, Search engines, Television, Radio, Phone directories, Directmail, Web sites, Billboards, Insert media (i.e. package inserts, ridealongs, blow-ins), etc.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention provides a way for product/service/benefit (andinformation) providers/advertisers/promoters (hereinafter “advertisers,“providers,” or “promoters”) using a computer network to influence thepositions within a product/service/benefit (hereinafter “PSB”) resultlist (hereinafter “PSB result list” or just “result list”) generated bya product/service/benefit (PSB) matching “engine” (hereinafter“match[ing] engine” or just “engine”).

More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and methodto enable providers/advertisers to select PSB criteria/characteristics(hereinafter “PSB criteria” or “criteria” or “characteristics”) relevant(having nexus) to themselves and/or theirproduct(s)/service(s)/benefit(s) (hereinafter “PSBs” or “offerings”);and influence result list positions for their PSB listings (hereinafter“PSB listings” or just “listings”) on a match engine result list.

“Entities” shall herein be understood to mean individuals, companies,businesses, non-profits, charities, governments, educationalinstitutions, and families; including any and all other agencies,groups, organizations, enterprises, etc. (of any manner or form); andalso including two or more of any of these entities acting together andin concert with one another.

In a preferred embodiment, after a PSB seeker (hereinafter “PSB seeker,”“entity seeker,” or simply “seeker”) has completed the requisite seekerquestionnaire/survey/profile (hereinafter “questionnaire”), the matchengine will generate a results list with each respective providers'listing(s) in position(s) influenced at least in part by at least onecriterion (criteria) factor as chosen by each provider. It is to beunderstood that “criteria,” as used herein, includes both the singular(criterion) as well as the plural (criteria); as is common in today'slanguage.

In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a provider selectsone or more of its criteria and influences a position within the resultslist generated by that criteria by participating in an onlinecompetitive bidding process. This online competitive bidding process isknown as a “pay only for results” process. “Pay only for results”applies market principles to PSB matching on the Internet. ConventionalPSB matching engines do not provide a way for providers to easilypredict the position of their PSBs in results lists.

A tool enabling providers to target criteria relevant to theirbusiness/purpose and to pinpoint the placement of their PSBs within theresults provides a powerful advantage to businesses and others seekingto increase the use of their PSBs. Furthermore, a competitive biddingprocess and pricing based on number of referrals generated helps insurethat the pricing structure reflects the market and is accessible toproviders of all budget sizes.

To participate in the process, a PSB provider may in a preferredembodiment access the provider's user account through a secure web site.The provider may use the account to place bids on criteria that arerelevant to the provider's web site (e.g., it products, services,benefits, information). Each bid is specific to at least one criterionand corresponds to a money amount that the provider will pay to theowner of the matching engine each time a seeker clicks on the provider'shyperlinked listing in the result list generated by the matching engine.The seeker's click will result in an access request being sent to theprovider's web site (or, in other embodiments, (an) alternativelocation(s) of provider's choosing, including one or moreproduct/informational/sales message pages in the event provider doesn'thave (a) web site/s or prefers not to use it/them), which will respondby transmitting the provider's web page to the seeker's browser. Thecharge to the provider for the placement is therefore directlyproportional to the benefit received, since the charge is based on thenumber of referrals to the provider's web site (as stated, and/or otheronline or offline provider designated location/s) that were generated bythe matching engine.

Preferably, the higher the bid, the more advantageous the placement inthe result list that is generated when the bidded criteria is entered bya PSB seeker using the engine. The list is arranged in order ofdecreasing bid amount, with the PSB listing corresponding to the highestbids displayed first to the seeker. Optionally, each PSB listingcorresponding to a bid is identified on the display as a paid listing.If so, the bid amount may be included on the identification. Inaddition, the result list of the present invention is preferablycombined with “non-paid” PSB descriptions; e.g. as with the numeroussocial benefits and other benefit programs provided by variousgovernment agencies, educational institutions, non-profit organizations,and the like. The combination of paid and unpaid listings helps ensurethat the seeker will receive the most complete and relevant PSB results.Optionally, because the non-paid listings are considered to have a bidamount of zero, such listings may be located following/underneath thepaid results.

According to a first embodiment of the present invention, there isprovided a system and method for enabling PSB providers to influence aposition for a PSB listing within a result list generated by a PSBmatching engine. The provider first selects one or more criteriarelevant to the PSB(s) to be listed. The provider influences the rankposition for each listing through an ongoing online competitive biddingprocess with other providers. The bidding process occurs when a providerenters a new bid amount for an existing listing or enters a bid amountfor a new listing. Preferably, the provider's bid is then processed inreal or near real time. This bid amount is compared with all other bidamounts from other providers for the same criteria, with new rank valuesbeing generated for all listings having that criteria.

The rank value determines the position where the provider's web sitedescription (and/or other contact and/or other information) will appearon the results page(s) that is generated once the questionnaire has beensubmitted to the matching engine by a PSB seeker. A higher bid willresult in a higher rank value and a more advantageous placement, whichis preferably near the beginning of the results list page. Though itcould be virtually anything of value; preferably, the quantity used inthe competitive bidding process is a money amount that the provider willpay to an owner of the matching engine each time the provider's web siteis referred by the engine. Preferably, this money amount will bededucted from an account balance that is retained in the provider'saccount for each time the provider's web site is referred by the engine.

One embodiment of the system and method of the present inventionprovides a database having accounts for the PSB providers. Each accountincludes contact and billing information for a provider. In addition,each account includes at least one listing, each listing havingpreferably (though it could be more or less) five components: adescription of the web site (and/or other contact/benefit information)to be listed, the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of the web site, one ormore criterion, a bid amount, and a title for the listing. Each accountmay also include the provider's payment history and a history oflistings entered by the user. The provider logs in to its account via anauthentication process running on a preferably secure server. Oncelogged in, the provider may add, delete, or modify a listing. Thefunctions of adding or deleting a listing, or modifying the bid amountof a listing is to initiate the competitive bidding process describedabove. All listing changes and modifications are preferably processedsubstantially in real time to support the online competitive biddingprocess. Alternatively, the system operator or an entity acting on itsbehalf may itself set up and manage (automatically and/or manually) anadvertising program for a system client e.g., as may be desired byprovider/advertisers without a web presence.

In another embodiment, seekers clicks on the providers' listings mayresolve not (just) to a web site, but could initiate any number of othercommonly known to the arts contact/information delivery channels e.g.,e-mails or instant messages could be sent, letters mailed, pop-upsdelivered, commercials initiated, phone calls made, personal visitsundertaken, etc. Any such “resolvation(s)” deemed suitable (e.g., by thesystem administrator and/or by one or more advertisers) for the systemof the present invention may be utilized. Note, however, that thearchitecture for and procedures to implement resolvations is notconventional in the system of the present invention as detailed herein.

The present invention is unique in that never before has there been anentity demographic, geographic, psychographic criteria targetedpay-for-performance system which allows product, service, and benefitprovider/advertiser/promoters to pay for the exposure of their offeringsto their desired targeted entities/marketplace(s) in real orsubstantially real time via a computer network. Further aspects of thepresent invention and many additional obvious advantages will becomeapparent during the course of the following description and by referenceto the attached drawings.

As used herein including the claims, the term “benefit(s)” shall beunderstood to mean any product(s) [including money and monetaryequivalents, e.g., vouchers, certificates, coupons, etc] or service(s)with a discounted (including to as little as zero cost) rate or otheradded value available to a PSB-seeking entity in addition to thoseproduct(s) or service(s) otherwise offered to the general set/applicable(of) entity(ies) for which such discounted products or services aredesigned for and targeted to.

Benefits are therefore themselves products and services; the differencebeing that “benefits,” as used herein, are products and services(including programs) made unique and special due to their discountedand/or value-added nature; targeted as they are to some subset of/withinone or more entity type. Benefits, unlike usual “available for purchaseand/or use by all” products and services, have at least oneeligibility/qualification requirement which absolutely must be met inorder for an entity to obtain/use it/them.

Such requirements (criteria/characteristics) may include such factors aswhere a person lives, how much they earn, size and make-up of family,current/past employment, spending habits, personal property owned (cars,computers, etc), personal interests and desires, etc; number ofemployees in a business, a company's location, gross revenues, netprofit, equipment needs (firmograpics); population of a town, industriespresent, geographic size, its demographic makeup; student number of aneducational facility, its location, courses of study offered, expansiondesires; number of people served by a non-profit organization, itstargeted constituency, percentage of funds used for operations, etc.

A match engine is, typically, a program (or coordinated set of programs)with related structure (database, interface, etc) able to match entities(individuals, businesses, governments, non-profit organizations, etc)with products, services, and benefits based on the geographic and/ordemographic and/or psychographic and/or firmographiccriteria/characteristics unique to each entity.

Such a match engine is described in detail in Ser. No. 09/832,440 by thesame present inventor, entitled Method and Apparatus for the Furnishingof Benefits Information and Benefits. It is incorporated herein byreference in its entirety.

Other examples of match engines include those provided and administeredby the U.S. Dept. of Labor (DOL) and the National Council on the Aging(NCOA); as found at their respective GovBenefits.gov andBenefitsCheckUp.org websites.

While there are a number of useful similarities, a principle,foundational difference between match engines and (Internet) searchengines are that match engines' database(s) consist of an orderlycollection of set-format, easily-identified, easily-correlated,easily-manipulated product, service, benefit information from any numberof “member” companies and firms. Search engines, on the other hand,utilize algorithms, links, etc to “crawl” the unorganized, unstructuredInternet in order to create a huge collection of disparate web (andother) pages of information from sources normally having no nexus of anytype with the search engine itself; often in any number of disparateformats; usually gathered from some 100's of millions—or billions—ofunrelated sources. Obtaining product, service, and benefit relevancy forsystem users with a match engine is therefore, unlike with searchengines, a goal far more easily obtained.

Criteria (characteristics) are, essentially, the who, what, when, where,why, and how information/data/factors that are a part of/whichcorrespond to all entities of all types; being most commonly of ademographic, geographic, psychographic (collectively; multigraphics),firmographic (generally, for non-human entities, i.e. companies,businesses, commercial enterprises, non-profits and charities, agencies,etc), interest/preference/desire nature.

“Seeker(s)” shall be understood to mean those entities desiring toobtain products, services, and benefits (and/or information concerningsuch) from the providers of such; and shall include individuals,businesses, and other commercial enterprises, non-profits and charities,governments, educational institutions, agencies, families, groups,organizations, enterprises, and any other entities of any type;including two or more of any of these entities acting together and inconcert with one another. It is also to be understood that “(in)substantially (in) real time” also includes “in real time.”

While in a preferred embodiment the current invention directs itself tocombining products AND services AND benefits AND information togetherfor maximum effectiveness, usefulness, and value; in alternativeembodiments, it could easily also match entities to ONLY products, ONLYservices, ONLY benefits, ONLY information; or to some combination of atleast two of these four.

As it is a summary only and therefore in no way exhaustive of thepresent inventions numerous possible forms and embodiments, it is to beunderstood that the present inventions Summary is not intended to, andshould accordingly not be used to, either limit the scope of the claimsor to limit the invention to any particular embodiment(s) or to (a)precise form(s).

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating the relationship between a largenetwork and one embodiment of the system and method for generating apay-for-performance Product/Service/Benefit (PSB) match result of thepresent invention;

FIG. 2 is a chart of menus, display screens, and input screens used inone embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a flow chart illustrating the advertiser user login processperformed in one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 4 is a flow chart illustrating the administrative user loginprocess performed in one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 5 is a diagram of data for an account record for use with oneembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 6 is a flow chart illustrating a method of adding money to anaccount record used in one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 7 illustrates an example of a PSB match result list generated byone embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 8 is a flow chart illustrating a change bids process used in oneembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 9 illustrates an example in one embodiment of a screen display usedin the change bids process of FIG. 8; and

FIG. 10 illustrates an example of a seeker questionnaire used in oneembodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Methods and systems for generating a pay-for-performanceproduct/service/benefit result determined by a site promoter, such as anadvertiser, over a client/server based computer network system aredisclosed. The following description is presented to enable any personskilled in the art to make and use the invention. For purposes ofexplanation, specific nomenclature is set forth to provide a thoroughunderstanding of the present invention. Descriptions of specificapplications are provided only as examples. Various modifications to thepreferred embodiments will be readily apparent to those skilled in theart, and the general principles defined herein may be applied to otherembodiments and applications without departing from the spirit and scopeof the invention and its claims.

By way of example and not limitation, those skilled in the art willappreciate that the invention may be practiced with various computersystem configurations, including hand-held devices, multiprocessorsystems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics,network PCs, minicomputers, mainframe computers, other types of suitablecomputing devices, TV set-top boxes, cell phones, and the like.

Thus, the present invention is not intended to be limited to theembodimenti shown, but is to be accorded the widest scope consistentwith the principles and features disclosed herein.

Referring now to the drawings, FIG. 1 is an example of a distributedsystem 10 configured as client/server architecture used in a preferredembodiment of the present invention. A “client” is a member of a classor group that uses the services of another class or group to which it isnot related. In the context of a computer network, such as the Internet,a client is a process (i.e. roughly a program or task) that requests aservice which is provided by another process, known as a server program.The client process uses the requested service without having to know anyworking details about the other server program or the server itself. Innetworked systems, a client process usually runs on a computer thataccesses shared network resources provided by another computer running acorresponding server process. However, it should also be noted that itis possible for the client process and the server process to run on thesame computer.

A “server” is typically a remote computer system that is accessible overa communications medium such as the Internet. The client process may beactive in a second computer system, and communicate with the serverprocess over a communications medium that allows multiple clients totake advantage of the information-gathering capabilities of the server.Thus, the server essentially acts as an information provider for acomputer network.

The block diagram of FIG. 1 therefore shows a distributed system 10comprising a plurality of client computers 12, a plurality of advertiserweb servers 14, an account management server 22, and a match engine webserver 24, all of which are connected to a network 20. The network 20will be hereinafter generally referred to as the Internet. Although thesystem and method of the present invention is specifically useful forthe Internet, it should be understood that the client computers 12,advertiser web servers 14, account management server 22, and matchengine web server 24 may be connected together through one of a numberof different types of wired and/or wireless networks. Such networks mayinclude local area networks (LANs), other wide area networks (WANs), andregional networks accessed over telephone lines, cable, wireless; suchas commercial information services. The client and server processes mayeven comprise different programs executing simultaneously on a singlecomputer.

The client computers 12 can be conventional personal computers (PCs),workstations, computer systems, etc. Each client 12 typically includesone or more processors, memories, input/output devices, and a networkinterface, such as a conventional modem. The advertiser web servers 14,account management server 22, and the match engine web server 24 can besimilarly configured. However, advertiser web servers 14, accountmanagement server 22, and match engine web server 24 may each includemany computers connected by a separate private network. In fact, thenetwork 20 may include hundreds of thousands of individual networks ofcomputers.

The client computers 12 can execute web browser programs 16, such as theNAVIGATOR, EXPLORER, or FIREFOX browser programs, to locate the webpages or records 30 stored on advertiser server 14. The browser programs16 allow the users to enter addresses of specific web pages 30 to beretrieved. These addresses are referred to as Uniform Resource Locators,or URLs. In addition, once a page has been retrieved, the browserprograms 16 can provide access to other pages or records when the user“clicks” on hyperlinks to other web pages. Such hyperlinks are locatedwithin the web pages 30 and provide an automated way for the user toenter the URL of another page and to retrieve that page. The pages canbe data records including as content plain textual information, or morecomplex digitally encoded multimedia content, such as software programs,graphics, audio signals, videos, and so forth.

In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, shown in FIG. 1,client computers 12 communicate through the network 20 with variousproduct, service, and benefit providers, including account managementserver 22, match engine server 24, and advertiser servers 14 using thefunctionality provided by a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), althoughother communications protocols, such as FTP, SNMP, TELNET, and a numberof other protocols known in the art, may be used. Preferably, matchengine server 24, account management server 22, and advertiser servers14 are located on the World Wide Web.

As discussed above, at least two types of server are contemplated in apreferred embodiment of the present invention. The first servercontemplated is an account management server 22 comprising a computerstorage medium 32 and a processing system 34. A database 38 is stored onthe storage medium 32 of the account management server 22. The database38 contains advertiser account information. It will be appreciated fromthe description below that the system and method of the presentinvention may be implemented in software that is stored as executableinstructions on a computer storage medium, such as memories or massstorage devices, on the account management server 22. Conventionalbrowser programs 16, running on client computers 12, may be used toaccess advertiser account information stored on account managementserver 22. Preferably, access to the account management server 22 isaccomplished through a firewall, not shown, which protects the accountmanagement and match result placement programs and the accountinformation from external tampering. Additional security may be providedvia enhancements to the standard communications protocols such as SecureHTTP or the Secure Sockets Layer.

The second server type contemplated is a match engine web server 24. Amatch engine program permits network users, upon navigating to the matchengine web server URL or sites on other web servers capable ofsubmitting queries to the match engine web server 24 through theirbrowser program 16, to complete at least in part at least onequestionnaire containing question(s) applicable to network users; thequestions being preferably demographic, geographic, psychographic(multigraphic) in nature; in order to identify products, services, andbenefits (PSBs) of interest to network users.

In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the match engine webserver 24 generates a match result list that includes relevant entriesobtained from and formatted by, at least in part, the results of thebidding process conducted by the account management server 22. The matchengine web server 24 generates a list of hypertext links to documentsthat contain information relevant to PSB criteria entered by the user atthe client computer 12. The match engine web server transmits this list,in the form of a web page, to the network user, where it is displayed onthe browser 16 running on the client computer 12. In addition, the matchresult list web page, an example of which is presented in FIG. 7, willbe discussed below in further detail.

Match engine web server 24 is connected to the Internet 20. In apreferred embodiment of the present invention, match engine web server24 includes a match database 40 comprised of PBS listing records used togenerate match results in response to user queries. In addition, matchengine web server 24 may also be connected to the account managementserver 22. Account management server 22 may also be connected to theInternet. The match engine web server 24 and the account managementserver 22 of the present invention address the different informationneeds of the users located at client computers 12.

For example, one class of users located at client computers 12 may bePSB providers such as advertising web site promoters or owners havingadvertiser web pages 30 located on advertiser web servers 14. Theseadvertising web site promoters, or advertisers, may wish to accessaccount information residing in storage 32 on account management server22. An advertising web site promoter may, through the account residingon the account management server 22, participate in a competitivebidding process with other advertisers. An advertiser may bid on anynumber of PSB criteria relevant to the content of the advertiser'sofferings and/or its web site. In one embodiment of the presentinvention, the relevance of one or more bidded criteria to anadvertiser's web site is determined through a manual editorial processprior to insertion of the PSB listing containing the criteria andadvertiser web site URL into the database 40. In an alternate embodimentof the present invention, the relevance of one or more bidded criteriain a PSB listing to the corresponding web site may be evaluated using acomputer program executing at processor 34 of account management server22, where the computer program will evaluate the criteria andcorresponding web site according to a set of predefined editorial rules.

The higher bids receive more advantageous placement on the PSB resultlist page generated by the match engine 24 when a match request usingthe criteria bid on by the advertiser is executed. In a preferredembodiment of the present invention, the amount bid by an advertisercomprises a money amount that is deducted from the account of theadvertiser for each time the advertiser's web site is accessed via ahyperlink on the PSB result list page. A PSB seeker “clicks” on thehyperlink with a computer input device to initiate a retrieval requestto retrieve the information associated with the advertiser's hyperlink.Preferably, each access or “click” on a PSB result list hyperlink willbe redirected to the match engine web server 24 to associate the “click”with the account identifier for an advertiser.

This redirect action, which is not readily apparent to the seeker, willaccess account identification information coded into the PSB result pagebefore accessing the advertiser's URL using the PSB result listhyperlink clicked on by the seeker. The account identificationinformation is recorded in the advertiser's account along withinformation from the retrieval request as a retrieval request event.Since the information obtained through this mechanism conclusivelymatches an account identifier with a URL in a manner not possible usingconventional server system logs known in the art, accurate account debitrecords will be maintained. Optionally, the advertiser's web sitedescription and hyperlink on the PSB result list page is accompanied byan indication that the advertiser's listing is a paid listing.Optionally, each paid listing displays a “cost to advertiser,” which isan amount corresponding to a “price-per-click” paid by the advertiserfor each referral to the advertiser's site through the PSB result list.

A second class of users at client computers 12 may comprise seekersseeking specific information on the web. The seekers may access, throughtheir browsers 16, a match engine web page 36 residing on web server 24.The match engine web page 36 includes a questionnaire in which a seekermay type or otherwise enter answers to one or more questions concerningthe seeker. Alternatively, the seeker may query the match engine webserver 24 through a questionnaire hyperlinked to the match engine webserver 24 and located on a web page stored at a remote web server. Whenthe seeker has finished completing anywhere from one to, preferably, arequired all of the questions in the questionnaire containing one ormore questions, the seeker may transmit the query to the match engineweb server 24 by clicking on a provided hyperlink. The match engine webserver 24 will then generate a match result list page and transmit thispage to the seeker at the client computer 12.

The seeker may click on the hypertext links associated with each listingon the PSB results page to access the corresponding web pages. Thehypertext links may access web pages anywhere on the Internet, andinclude paid listings to advertiser web pages 30 located on advertiserweb servers 14. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, thematch result list also includes non-paid listings that are not placed asa result of advertiser bids. The non-paid hypertext links may alsoinclude links manually indexed into the database 40 by an editorialteam. Preferably, non-paid listings may appear among the paid advertiserlistings. Optionally, the non-paid listings follow the paid advertiserlistings on the match results page.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing menus, display screens, and input screenspresented to an advertiser accessing the account management server 22through a conventional browser program 16. The advertiser, upon enteringthe URL of the account management server 22 into the browser program 16of FIG. 1, invokes a login application, discussed below as shown atscreen 110 of FIG. 2, running on the processing system 34 of the server22. Once the advertiser is logged-in, the processing system 34 providesa menu 120 that has a number of options and further services foradvertisers. These items, which will be discussed in more detail below,cause routines to be invoked to either implement the advertiser'srequest or request further information prior to implementing theadvertiser's request.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the advertiser may accessseveral options through menu 120, including requesting customer service130, viewing advertiser policies 140, performing account administrationtasks 150, adding money to the advertiser's account 160, managing theaccount's advertising presence on the match engine 170, and viewingactivity reports 180. Context-specific help 190 may also generally beavailable at menu 120 and all of the above-mentioned options.

The login procedure of the preferred embodiment of the present inventionis shown in FIGS. 3 and 4 for two types of user. FIG. 3 shows the loginprocedures 270 for an advertiser. FIG. 4 shows the login procedures 290for an administrator managing and maintaining the system and method ofthe present invention. As discussed above, the advertiser oradministrator at a client computer 12 must first use a browser programat steps 271 or 291 to access the account management server. After theadvertiser navigates to the URL of the login page to start the loginprocess at step 272 or 292, the processing system 34 of the accountmanagement server 22 invokes a login application at steps 274 or 294.According to this application, the processor provides an input screen110 (FIG. 2) that requests the advertiser's or administrator's user nameand password. These items of information are provided at steps 276 or295 to a security application known in the art for the purpose ofauthentication, based on the account information stored in a databasestored in storage 32 of account management server 22.

According to FIG. 3, after the user has been authenticated as anadvertiser, the advertiser is provided with the menu screen 120 of FIG.2 and limited read/write access privileges only to the correspondingadvertiser account, as shown in step 278. The advertiser login event 278may also be recorded in step 280 in an audit trail data structure aspart of the advertiser's account record in the database. The audit trailis preferably implemented as a series of entries in database 38, whereeach entry corresponds to an event wherein the advertisers accountrecord is accessed. Preferably, the audit trail information for anaccount record may be viewed by the account owner and other appropriateadministrators.

However, if the user is authenticated as an administrator in step 295 ofFIG. 4, the administrator is provided with specified administrativeaccess privileges to all advertiser accounts as shown in step 296. Theadministrator login event 296 is recorded in step 297 in the audit traildata structure portion of the administrator's account record: This audittrail is preferably implemented as a series of entries in database 38,where each entry corresponds to an event wherein the administratorsaccount record is accessed. Most preferably, the administrator's audittrail information may be viewed by the account owner and otherappropriate administrators.

Furthermore, instead of the general advertiser main menu shown to theauthenticated advertiser users in step 282, the authenticatedadministrator is provided in step 298 with access to search the database38 of advertiser accounts. Preferably, a database search interface isprovided to the administrator that enables the administrator to selectan advertiser account to monitor.

For example, the interface may include query boxes in which theadministrator may enter an account number or username or contact namecorresponding to an account the administrator wishes to access. When theadministrator selects an advertiser account to monitor in step 299, theadministrator is then brought to the main advertiser page 120 of FIG. 2,which is also seen by the advertisers.

Access to the account information 32 located on the account managementserver 22 is restricted to users having an account record on the system,as only those users are provided with a valid login name and password.Password and login name information is stored along with the user'sother account information in the database 38 of the account managementserver 22, as shown in FIG. 1. Account information, including a loginuser name and password, is entered in the database 38 of FIG. 1 via aseparate online registration process that is outside the scope of thepresent invention.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing the types of information contained in eachadvertiser account record 300 in the database. First, an advertiseraccount record 300 contains a username 302 and a password 304, used foronline authentication as described above. The account record alsocontains contact information 310 (e.g., contact name, company name,street address, phone, e-mail address).

Contact information 310 is preferably utilized to direct communicationsto the advertiser when the advertiser has requested notification of keyadvertiser events under the notification option, discussed below. Theaccount record 300 also contains billing information 320 (e.g., currentbalance, credit card information). The billing information 320 containsdata accessed when the advertiser selects the option to add money to theadvertiser's account. In addition, certain billing information, such asthe current balance, may trigger events requiring notification under thenotification option. The audit trail section 325 of an account record300 contains a list of all events wherein the account record 300 isaccessed. Each time an account record 300 is accessed or modified, by anadministrator or advertiser, a short entry describing the account accessand/or modification event will be appended to the audit trail section325 of the administrator or advertiser account that initiated the event.The audit trail information may then be used to help generate a historyof transactions made by the account owner under the account.

The advertising information section 330 contains information needed toconduct the online bidding process of the present invention, wherein aposition is determined for preferably a web site description andhyperlink within a product/service/benefit (PSB) result list generatedby a match engine. The advertising data 330 for each user account 300may be organized as zero or more subaccounts 340. Each subaccount 340comprises at least one PSB listing 344. Each PSB listing corresponds toa bid on one or more PSB criteria. An advertiser may utilize subaccountsto organize multiple bids on multiple PSB criteria sets (correspondingto multiple PSBs), or to organize bids for multiple web sites.Subaccounts are also particularly useful for advertisers seeking totrack the performance of targeted market segments. The subaccountsuperstructure is introduced for the benefit of the advertisers seekingto organize their advertising efforts, and does not affect the method ofoperation of the present invention.

Alternatively, the advertising information section need not include theadded organizational layer of subaccounts, but may simply comprise oneor more PSB listings.

The PSB listing 344 corresponds to at least one criteria/bid pairing andcontains key information to conduct the online competitive biddingprocess. Preferably, each PSB listing comprises the followinginformation: PSB criteria 352, web site description 354, un 356, bidamount 358, and a title 360. The PSB criteria 352 comprises one or morecriteria factors, preferably of a demographic, geographic, psycographic,preference/interest nature (in any language). Each criterion factor inturn comprises a character string. The PSB criteria is the object of thecompetitive online bidding process. The advertiser selects at least onePSB criterion to bid on that is relevant to the content of theadvertiser's web site and/or to their product, service, benefit,informational offering(s). Ideally, the advertiser may select (a) PSBcriteria that is/are targeted to entity information/criteria entered byseekers desiring the information on the advertiser's web site, theirproducts, services, benefits and/or information; although lesscommon/less related PSB criteria may also be selected to ensurecomprehensive coverage of relevant entity criteria for bidding.

The web site description 354 is a textual (optionally; and/or visual,audio, etc) description (of any suitable length/size) of the content ofthe advertiser's web site (and/or their PSB[s]) and may be displayed aspart of the advertiser's entry in a PSB result list. The PSB listing 344may also contain a title 360 of the web site that may be displayed asthe hyperlinked heading to the advertiser's entry in a PSB result list.The URL 356 contains the Uniform Resource Locator address of theadvertiser's web site. When the user clicks on the hyperlink provided inthe advertiser's result list entry, the URL is provided to the browserprogram. The browser program, in turn, accesses the advertiser's website through the redirection mechanism discussed above. The URL may alsobe displayed as part of the advertiser's entry in a PSB result list.Alternatively, since millions of product, service, and benefit providers(especially small to medium sized companies and professional practices)do not have web sites, the current invention's system administratoritself may optionally provide such web sites, “landing pages,” and/orother “destinations” where further information, and/or including contactinformation, concerning these providers may be provided/displayed to thePSB seeker, thereby negating the need for a PSB provider to have a website, web site title, or URL.

The bid amount 358 preferably is a money amount bid by an advertiser fora listing. This money amount is deducted from the advertiser's prepaidaccount or is recorded for advertiser accounts that are invoiced foreach time a match request is executed by a user on the corresponding PSBcriteria and the PSB result list hyperlink is used to refer the seekerto the advertiser's web site. Finally, a rank value is a value generateddynamically, preferably by the processing system 34 of the accountmanagement server 22 shown in FIG. 1, each time an advertiser places abid or a seeker enters a PSB query. The rank value of an advertiser'sPSB listing determines the placement location of the advertiser's entryin the PSB result list generated when a PSB match request is executed onthe corresponding PSB criteria. Preferably, rank value is an ordinalvalue determined in a direct relationship to the bid amount 358; thehigher the bid amount, the higher the rank value, and the moreadvantageous the placement location on the PSB result list.

Most preferably, the rank value of 1 is assigned to the highest bidamount with successively higher ordinal values (e.g., 2, 3, 4, . . . )associated with successively lower ranks and assigned to successivelylower bid amounts.

In one embodiment, each bid may be dependent upon or requiresatisfaction of various criteria which must be met in order for the bidamount to remain the same; or for the listing to remain on the resultslist and displayed to a seeker at all. For example, thanks to thecurrent invention's dynamic, substantially in real time nature, anadvertiser might specify that for the first 1,000 times within a giventime period, every time their listing is clicked, they are paying$2.37/click. Thereafter (though the position of their listing willnormally drop for doing so), for the remainder of the given time period,they will pay $1.02/click. Alternatively, the advertiser could elect tohave their listing dropped entirely after those 1,000 clicks. In anotherexample, an advertiser could designate a certain time of day (time zonedeterminate), only during which its listings are to appear. It is to beunderstood that the amount bid may be dependent on as many criteria asis deemed desirable by the system operator and its advertisers. As canbe readily seen, a virtually limitless number of bidding parameters,whether simple or complex, may be readily utilized with the currentsystem; all being well within the present invention's scope.

Once logged in, an advertiser can perform a number of straightforwardtasks set forth in menu 120 of FIG. 2, including viewing a list of rulesand policies for advertisers, and requesting customer serviceassistance. These items cause routines to be invoked to implement therequest. For example, when “Customer Service” is selected, an inputscreen 130 is displayed to allow the advertiser to select the type ofcustomer service requested. In addition, forms may be provided on screen130 so that an advertiser may type a customer comment into a web-basedinput form.

When “View Advertiser Policies” is selected, a routine will be invokedby processing system 34 of the account management server 22 FIG. 1. Asshown in FIG. 2, the routine will display an informational web page 140.The web page 140 sets forth the advertiser policies currently in effect(e.g., “All PSB listing descriptions must clearly relate to the PSBcriteria”).

Menu 120 of FIG. 2 also includes an “Account Administration” selection150 which allows an advertiser, among other things, to view and changethe advertiser's contact information and billing information, or updatethe advertiser's access profile, if any. Web-based forms well known inthe art and similar to those discussed above are provided for updatingaccount information.

The “Account Administration” menu also includes a selection enabling anadvertiser to view the transaction history of the advertiser's account.Under the “View Transaction History” selection, the advertiser mayinvoke routines to view a listing of past account transactions (e.g.,adding money to account, adding or deleting bidded PSB criteria, orchanging a bid amount). Additional routines may be implemented to permitadvertisers to display a history of transactions of a specified type, orthat occur within a specified time frame. The transaction informationmay be obtained from the audit trail list 325 of FIG. 5, describedabove.

Clickable buttons that may be implemented in software, web-based forms,and/or menus, etc. may be provided as known in the art to enableadvertisers to specify such limitations.

In addition, the “Account Administration” menu 150 of FIG. 2 includes aselection enabling an advertiser to set notification options. Under thisselection, the advertiser may select options that will cause the systemto notify the advertiser when certain key events have occurred. Forexample, the advertiser may elect to set an option to have the systemsend conventional electronic mail messages to the advertiser when theadvertiser's account balance has fallen below a specified level. In thismanner, the advertiser may receive a “warning” to replenish the accountbefore the account is suspended (meaning the advertiser's listings willno longer appear in PSB result lists). Another key event for which theadvertiser may wish notification is a change in position of anadvertiser's listing in the PSB result list generated for (a) particularPSB criteria. For example, an advertiser may wish to have the systemsend a conventional electronic mail message to the advertiser if theadvertiser has been outbid by another advertiser for a particular PSBcriteria (set) (meaning that the advertiser's listing may appear in aposition farther down on the PSB result list page than previously). Whenone of the system-specified key events occurs, a database search istriggered for each affected PSB listing. The system will then executethe appropriate notification routine in accordance with the notificationoptions specified in the advertiser's account. Preferably, advertiserhas previously established various parameters in its account 170 wherebywhen such notifications are “sent out,” preferablynotification-concurrent actions are automatically taken to address thecondition(s) present which caused the notification in the first placee.g., as in the case where the notified advertiser's bid on a given PSBcriteria is automatically increased by some amount as a result ofanother competing advertiser's change in position within the PSB resultlist.

Referring back to FIG. 2, a selection also appears in menu 120 thatpermits an advertiser to add money to the advertiser's account, so thatthe advertiser will have funds in their account to pay for referrals tothe advertiser's site through the PSB results page. Preferably, onlyadvertisers with funds in their advertiser's accounts may have theirpaid listings included in any PSB result lists generated. Mostpreferably, advertisers meeting selected business criteria may elect, inplace of maintaining a positive account balance at all times, incuraccount charges regardless of account balance and pay an invoiced amountat regular intervals which reflects the charges incurred by actualreferrals to the advertiser's site generated by the match engine. Theprocess that is executed when the “Add Money to Account” selection isinvoked is shown in further detail in FIG. 6, beginning at step 602.When the “Add Money to Account” selection is clicked in step 604, afunction is invoked which receives data identifying the advertiser andretrieves the advertiser's account from the database. The executingprocess then stores the advertiser's default billing information anddisplays the default billing information for the advertiser in step 606.The displayed billing information includes a default amount of money tobe added, a default payment type, and default instrument information.

In the preferred embodiment of the present invention, an advertiser mayadd funds online and substantially in real time through the use of acredit card, although the use of other payment types are certainly wellwithin the scope of the present invention. For example, in an alternateembodiment of the present invention, advertisers may add funds to theiraccount by transferring the desired amount from the advertiser's bankaccount through an electronic funds verification mechanism known in theart such as debit cards, in a manner similar to that set forth in U.S.Pat. No. 5,724,424 to Gifford. In another alternate embodiment of thepresent invention, advertisers can add funds to their account usingconventional paper-based checks. In that case, the additional funds maybe updated in the account record database through manual entry. Theinstrument information includes further details regarding the type ofpayment. For example, for a credit card, the instrument information mayinclude data on the name of the credit card (e.g., MasterCard, Visa, orAmerican Express), the credit card number, the expiration date of thecredit card, and billing information for the credit card (e.g., billingname and address).

In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, only a partialcredit card number is displayed to the advertiser for security purposes.

The default values displayed to the advertiser are obtained from apersistent state, e.g., stored in the account database. In an embodimentof the present invention, the stored billing information values maycomprise the values set by the advertiser the last (e.g. most recent)time the process of adding money was invoked and completed for theadvertiser's account. The default billing information is displayed tothe advertiser in a web-based form. The advertiser may click on theappropriate text entry boxes on the web-based form and make changes tothe default billing information. After the advertiser completes thechanges, the advertiser may click on a hyperlinked “Submit” buttonprovided on the form to request that the system update the billinginformation and current balance in step 608. Once the advertiser hasrequested an update, a function is invoked by the system which validatesthe billing information provided by the advertiser and displays it backto the advertiser for confirmation, as shown in step 610. Theconfirmation billing information is displayed in read-only form and maynot be changed by the advertiser.

The validation step functions as follows. If payment is to be debitedfrom an advertiser's external account, payment may be authenticated,authorized and completed using the system set forth in U.S. Pat. No.5,724,424 to Gifford. However, if the payment type is by credit card, avalidating algorithm is invoked by the system, which validates thecredit card number using a method such as that set forth in U.S. Pat.No. 5,826,241 to Stein et al. The validating algorithm also validatesthe expiration date via a straightforward comparison with the currentsystem date and time. In addition, the function stores the new values ina temporary instance prior to confirmation by the advertiser.

Once the advertiser ascertains that the displayed data is correct, theadvertiser may click on a “Confirm” button provided on the page toindicate that the account should be updated in step 612. In step 612, afunction is invoked by the system which adds money to the appropriateaccount balance, updates the advertisers billing information, andappends the billing information to the advertiser's payment history. Theadvertiser's updated billing information is stored to the persistentstate (e.g., the account record database) from the temporary instance.

Within the function invoked at step 612, a credit card payment functionmay be invoked by the system at step 614. In an alternate embodiment ofthe present invention, other payment functions such as debit cardpayments may be invoked by defining multiple payment types depending onthe updated value of the payment type.

If the payment type is credit card, the user's account is creditedimmediately at step 616, the user's credit card having already beenvalidated in step 610. A screen showing the status of the add moneytransaction is displayed, showing a transaction number and a new currentbalance, reflecting the amount added by the just-completed credit cardtransaction.

In an alternate embodiment of the present invention, after the money hasbeen added to the account, the amount of money added to the account maybe allocated between subaccounts the end of the add money process atstep 616. If the advertiser has no subaccounts, all of the money in theaccount is a general allocation. However, if the advertiser has morethan one subaccount, the system will display a confirmation and defaultmessage prompting the advertiser to “Allocate Money BetweenSubaccounts”.

The menu selection “Allocate Money Between Subaccounts” may be invokedwhen money is added to the advertiser account after step 616 of FIG. 6,or it may be invoked within the “Account Management” menu 170 shown inFIG. 2. The “Account Management” menu 170 is accessible from theAdvertiser Main Page 120, as shown in FIG. 2. This “Allocate MoneyBetween Subaccounts” menu selection permits an advertiser to allocatecurrent and any pending balances of the advertiser's account among theadvertisers subaccounts. The system will then update the subaccountbalances. The current balance allocations will be made in real or nearreal time, while the pending balance allocations will be stored in thepersistent state. A routine will be invoked to update the subaccountbalances to reflect the pending balance allocations when the payment forthe pending balance is processed. Automatic notification may be sent tothe advertiser at that time, if requested. This intuitive online accountmanagement and allocation permits advertisers to manage their onlineadvertising budget quickly and efficiently. Advertisers may replenishtheir accounts with funds and allocate their budgets, all in one easyweb-based session. The computer-based implementation eliminates timeconsuming, high cost manual entry of the advertiser's accounttransactions.

The “Allocate Money Between Subaccounts” routine begins when anadvertiser indicates the intent to allocate money by invoking theappropriate menu selection at the execution points indicated above. Whenthe advertiser indicates the intent to allocate, a function is invokedby the system to determine whether there are funds pending in thecurrent balance (i.e., unactivated account credits) that have not yetbeen allocated to the advertiser's subaccounts, and displays the balanceselection options. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention,an account instance is created and a pending current balance accountfield is set from the persistent state.

If there are no unallocated pending funds, the system may display thecurrent available balances for the account as a whole as well as foreach subaccount. The advertiser then distributes the current availablebalance between subaccounts and submits a request to update thebalances. A function is invoked which calculates and displays thecurrent running total for subaccount balances. The current running totalis stored in a temporary variable which is set to the sum of currentbalances for all subaccounts for the specified advertiser. The functionalso validates the new available subaccount balances to make sure thatthe total does not exceed the authorized amount. If the newadvertiser-set available subaccount balances does not exceed theauthorized amount, a function is invoked which will update all of thesubaccount balances in the persistent state and display the update inread-only format.

If there are pending funds in the current account balance, the pendingfunds must be allocated separately from the available current balance.The pending funds will then be added into the available current balancewhen the funds are received. The function must therefore prompt theadvertiser to choose between allocating pending funds or allocatingavailable funds. The allocating pending funds selection works in muchthe same manner as the allocating available funds selection outlinedabove. After the advertiser chooses to allocate pending funds, a routineis invoked to display current pending balances for the account and thesubaccounts. The advertiser distributes the pending subaccount balancesbetween campaigns and submits a request to update the balances. Afunction is invoked which calculates and displays the current runningtotals for the pending subaccount balances. This function also validatesthe new pending subaccount allocations to make sure that the allocationsdo not exceed any authorized amount. The current running total ofpending allocations is set to the sum of current pending balances forall subaccounts for the advertiser. If the new user-set pendingsubaccount balances or the total of such balances do not exceed anyauthorized amount, the function will update all of the pendingsubaccount allocations in the persistent state, e.g. the advertiser'saccount in the database, and display the update in read-only format.

As indicated above and shown in FIG. 2, a routine displaying the accountmanagement menu 170 may be invoked from the advertiser main menu 120.Aside from the “Allocate Money Between Subaccounts” selection describedabove, the remaining selections all use to some extent the PSB criteriapresent in the advertiser's account on the database, and may also affectthe advertiser's entry in the PSB result list. Thus, a furtherdescription of the PSB result list generated by the match engine isprovided at this point.

When a remote product/service/benefit/information seeker accesses thequestionnaire/criteria query page on the match engine web server 24 andexecutes a PSB match request according to the procedure describedpreviously, the match engine web server 24 preferably generates anddisplays a PSB result list where one or more criteria of preferably eachPSB listing in the PSB result list preferably exactly matches at leastone of the PSB criteria of the match request query entered by the remoteseeker. Alternatively, “canonicalized” criteria of (a) PSB listing(s) inthe PSB result list may preferably exactly match the canonicalized matchrequest query entered by the remote seeker.

The canonicalization of criteria factors/terms (when applicable) used inqueries and PBS listings removes common irregularities of criteriafactors/terms entered by seekers and web site promoters(product/service/benefit/information providers); such as capital lettersand pluralizations, in order to generate relevant results. In anotherembodiment, the match engine web server 24 may generate and display aPSB result list where one or more criteria of at least one PSB listingin the PSB result list does not exactly match at least one of the PSBcriteria of the match request query entered by the remote seeker.

However, alternate schemes for determining a match between the criteriaof the PSB listing and the match request query entered by the remoteseeker are well within the scope of the present invention. For example,string matching algorithms known in the art may be employed to generatematches where the PSB criteria of the PSB listing and the match requestquery have the same root but are not exactly the same (e.g., reader vs.reading). Alternatively a thesaurus database of synonyms may be storedat match engine web server 24, so that matches may be generated for (a)PSB criteria having synonyms. Internationalization methodologies may beemployed to refine PSB match requests for users outside the UnitedStates. For example, country or language-specific PSB results may begenerated, by a cross-reference of the advertiser account database.

Numerous types/versions/formats/presentations/instantiations of thequestionnaire/survey/profile e.g.; including variations in the number,type, and format of the questions/data asked/supplied, includingpreferably those of a demographic, geographic, psychographic,firmographic, preference/interest/usage/future usage nature; the answersto be supplied by the PSB seekers, with or withoutpersonally-identifying information, etc, have been used for many decadesand are well within the knowledge of those in the art. Accordingly, noattempt will be made here to attempt to detail every possible version ofsuch standard questionnaires/surveys/profiles, as the options arevirtually limitless. Any questionnaire deemed suitable (e.g., by thesystem administrator) for the system of the present invention may beutilized. Note, however, that the architecture for and procedures toimplement questionnaires is not conventional, in the bidded-position,pay for performance system of matching PSB providers with PSB seekers asdetailed herein.

The questionnaire may use any means suitable to complete thequestionnaire e.g., click on an icon, place an “X,” “check,” or othermark on, next to, or nearby a selection, fill in a box, drop-down menus;or any other means known in the art for indicating a choice or selectionof one or more items from a list on or off of a web page. Thequestionnaire may also make use of specific numbers and figures, lettersand letter combinations, number/letter combinations, words, range(s),range(s) of number(s), value range(s), etc; and/or any other means as iswell known in the art for completing the questions of a questionnaire onor off of a web page. FIG. 10 illustrates an example of a seekerquestionnaire which may be used in one embodiment of the presentinvention. While in a preferred embodiment, all the questions are“closed-ended;” that is, where a seeker is given a finite selection ofspecified answers from which to choose for each question; in anotherembodiment, one or more of the questions may be “open-ended,” wherethere are no specific, predetermined answer(s), and seeker is free to“share its thoughts” in their own words.

In such an “open-ended” embodiment, the well-known-to-the-arts naturallanguage processing (NLP) (computational linguistics) or some othermethod as is well known to the arts may be used in order to assist thesystem operator in minimizing human involvement in the correlation ofthe seeker's questionnaire information with that of the advertiserschosen criteria.

Possible questionnaire questions/data requests for individuals mayinclude name, address, e-mail address, telephone number, date ofbirth/age, income (exact dollar amount or range), marital status,presence of children (number, ages, sex), occupation, education level,credit cards used, credit score(s), whether homeowner or renter,interests and activities (e.g., bicycling, golf, running, bowling,snow/water skiing, reading, fishing, crafts, Internet surfing,photography, travel [cruise, car, plane, train], wines, coin/stampcollecting, watching TV, etc.). Also; products owned/used (auto make,model, year; when/where/why/how bought/paid for), services used,current/future intentions (with or without time periods/ranges; gettingmarried, having a baby, buying/selling a home; buying/leasing a newvehicle, RV, boat, aircraft, or any other product, etc), medical/healthstatus and conditions present (asthma, arthritis, high blood pressure,cancer, etc), types of investments made, social concerns, insurancetypes held/desired, musical preferences, nutrition and diet.

In other “non-human” entity system applications (e.g. business tobusiness, business to government, government to government, etc), therequisite questionnaire(s) will of necessity utilize questions and “dataindicators” appropriate to those applications and markets (e.g.firmographics) These other-entity applications are well within the scopeof the all-entity enablement of the present invention.

Preferably, personally-identifying questions are excluded from thequestionnaire in order to maximize system's desirability and use byseekers. If any individual advertisers desire to require personalinformation (or other information not initially requested by thesystem's initial questionnaire) as a condition of—or to qualifyfor—obtaining their offering(s) (such as with government programs,tobacco and alcohol companies, etc), such information may optionally becollected after the seeker has submitted its match query but beforedelivery of the advertiser's information concerning its product,service, benefit, or information offering(s) to the seeker; via thepresentation/delivery to the seeker of an additional or supplementalquestionnaire to be completed. In a similar manner, additional questionsmay be presented to the seeker, at any time during the process,depending, for example, on seeker's answers/responses to variousquestions as seeker proceeds through the questionnaire (e.g., as whenclicking from one page of a questionnaire to the next). This may berepeated any number of times as is deemed suitable.

Though the present system is fully operational with as few as onequestion (e.g., just the seeker's zip code, city, or sex) in thequestionnaire being answered; the more questions answered, and answeredas precisely as possible, the more comprehensive and useful the systemis to the seeker (and to the advertisers). Accordingly, it is to beunderstood that the present invention does not require that thepresented questionnaire be completed in its entirety by the seeker inorder to be presented with a results list; only that at least one of thequestions/data fields of the questionnaire be answered/completed; inorder to produce matches with at least some of the advertiser(s).

That said, in order to maximize the systems effectiveness and usefulnessto all parties (the advertiser/providers, the seekers, and the systemoperator), in a most preferred embodiment the system operator doesrequire that the questionnaire be completed in its entirety in order toreceive a result list. Alternatively, at least one or more certain“high-importance” specified question(s) may be required to becompleted/answered in order for seekers to receive a results list atall. No attempt shall be made here to list all possible modificationsand variations given the near impossibility of doing so. Any and allsuch options/embodiments are well within the scope of the presentinvention.

It is to be understood that alternate schemes for obtaining the neededinformation/data from entities for its correlation with theadvertiser/providers are well within the scope of the present invention.While their use is preferred, questionnaire/survey/profiles are notrequired. For example, entity match requests may be integrated in wholeor in part with existing or future search enginetechnologies/methodologies (or even other applications), e.g., insteadof the use of a questionnaire in order to obtain the needed entitycriteria, an entity could simply enter one or more of their criteriondirectly into a search engines query box/field (even optionally alongwith one or more search terms) e.g., as in the following (or somesimilar or related) manner.

-   -   $50,000-$74,999+F+37+CA+91360+MC+Sports;        wherein this data corresponds to:    -   Household Income+Sex+Age+State of Residence+Zip Code+whether or        not Minor Children are in the        household+Likes/Dislikes/Hobbies/Activities

Drop down boxes may be utilized to quickly and easily guide a seekerthrough such a process. As is obvious, in such a version, some type ofindication/election will of necessity need to be made by entity in orderto designate that a match request is being made of the match engine;either instead of, in addition to, or subsequent to a search requestbeing conducted on the search engine; in order for seeker to obtain thePSB result list they desire. This is so, because, as is now understood;search engines by definition are unable to produce match results just asmatch engines by definition are unable to produce search results. In arelated embodiment, an additional (preferably close to the search box)query/field box separate from the search query/field box may be used inthis manner; preferably where the match request is processed atsubstantially the same time as the search request is. In this way, thecurious and anxious searcher/seeker will concurrently discover both whatthey're looking for (via Search and Match) AND what they didn't know wasalready theirs to claim (via Match). Any and all such“questionnaire-free” criteria-acquisition variations/embodiments arewell within the scope of the present invention.

An example of a PSB result list display used in an embodiment of thepresent invention is shown in FIG. 7, which is a display of the firstfew entries resulting from a match request query from a seeker with thefollowing criteria factors (characteristics):

-   -   Female+Age 37+$50,000-$74,999 Total Household Income+Minor        Children in Household+California Resident+Enjoys Sports

As shown in FIG. 7, a single entry, such as entry 710 a in a PSB resultlist consists of a description 720 preferably of a web site, preferablycomprising a title and a short textual description, and preferably ahyperlink 730 which, when clicked by a seeker, directs the seeker'sbrowser preferably to the URL where the described web site is located.The URL 740 may also optionally be displayed in the PSB result listentry 710 a, as shown in FIG. 7. The “click through” of a result itemoccurs when the remote seeker viewing the PSB result list display 710 ofFIG. 7 selects, or “clicks” on the hyperlink 730 of the PSB result listdisplay 710. In order for a “click through” to be completed, theseeker's click should be recorded at the account management server andredirected to the advertiser's URL via the redirect mechanism discussedabove.

PSB result list entries 710 a-710 g may also show the rank value, 760 athrough 760 g, of the advertiser's listing. The rank value is an ordinalvalue, preferably a number, generated and assigned to the PSB listing bythe processing system 34 of FIG. 1. Preferably, the rank value isassigned through a process, implemented in software, that establishes anassociation between the bid amount, the rank, and the criteria of a PSBlisting. The process gathers all advertiser listings having criteriasets wherein at least one criterion of each advertiser criteria setmatches at least one criterion of the seeker; but only where theadvertiser criteria sets DO NOT contain any criteria which does notmatch the criteria of the seeker (further explained below). Then itsorts the listings in order from highest to lowest bid amount, andassigns a rank value to each listing in order. The highest bid amountreceives the highest rank value, the next highest bid amount receivesthe next highest rank value, proceeding to the lowest bid amount, whichreceives the lowest rank value. Most preferably, the highest rank valueis 1 with successively increasing ordinal values (e.g., 2, 3, 4, . . . )assigned in order of successively decreasing rank. The correlationbetween rank value and bid amount is illustrated in FIG. 7, where eachof the paid advertiser list entries 710 a through 710 d and 710 f and710 g display the advertiser/providers' bid amounts 750 a through 750 dand 750 f and 750 g for that entry.

In a preferred embodiment, where seekers are required to complete theentire questionnaire as a condition of receiving a result list at all,the system and method of FIG. 1 implement result list placement logicwhich may, by way of example and not limitation, be summarized by thefollowing rules:

1. You may at all times create and bid on any criteria (characteristics)set you desire; your set containing anywhere from as few as onecriterion factor (e.g. just one or more of the 40,000+Zip Codes) up toand including all of our available criteria factors. You're always ableto decide for yourself how best to target your products, services, andbenefits to your customers/clients. You always control exactly whoreceives your offers, and, often just as important, who doesn't. (Don'teven try getting this kind of pinpoint targeting and control from searchengine marketing [SEM] or search engine optimization [SEO]—because youcan't.)

2. Your listing/advertisement will be delivered/presented only toseekers meeting at least your complete criteria set; whether your setconsists of one criterion . . . or 25.

3. We will place you at the position you requested among otherstargeting the same exact criteria set at the lowest price possible.

4. There is at all times a minimum bid of $1.00 per criteria set;regardless of the number of or type of criterion factors chosen.

5. Minimum bid increments are $0.01.

6. In order to maximize seekers attention to and interest in theirresult lists, unpaid listings may at system operator's sole discretionbe placed anywhere before, after, or among the paid listings.

7. If and when result lists are arranged/displayed in categories, ahigher amount bid listing will always appear above a lower amount bidlisting, regardless of the criteria set selected by eachadvertiser/provider for each of their respective listings. Ties underthis particular scenario will be broken by date of listing; earliest ontop, 2^(nd) earliest 2^(nd), 3^(rd) earliest 3^(rd), etc (referring hereto positions among the tied listings; not to positions within the entireresult list).

8. Subject to any criteria bid caps you may have set, if there are tiesbetween you and one or more other advertisers sharing the same exactcriteria set that make your requested position unavailable, we will makeyour new bid $0.01 more than the tie amount and you will be right on topof the ties. This means you might get a position higher than yourequested.

9. If your requested position cannot be obtained because your bid cap istoo low, we will get you the best position for your bid cap. Often thatmeans that your new bid will be equal to your bid cap, but if we can getthat same position for a lower price, we will give you the lower price.

10. You bid only against others also targeting your exact same criteriaset Your “Current Rank” and “Bid to Become #1” components are valid asbetween you and the other advertisers targeting this exact same criteriaset [FIG. 9]. When seekers submit queries, your “current rank” and “bidto become number one” may not represent your listing's position withinthe result list presented to a given seeker. This is due to the requiredinclusion in the seeker's result list of any and all advertisers havingone or more criterion factors in common with any of the seeker'scriterion factors except when such advertiser criteria sets ALSO containany criterion factors which contradict any of the seeker's criteria(this will be further explained below). Advertisers who's criteria setsboth match in whole or in part seeker's criteria set AND which alsoincludes additional criteria beyond seeker's, because in such cases theadvertisers have indicated a desire for even greater specificity, arenot displayed.

Though they could be the same occasionally; in the majority of thecases, your listing will normally differ from the “current rank” and“bid to become #1” numbers shown in your change bids selection screen(s)[FIG. 9]. There is no need, however, to be concerned about thisphenomena. Remember that because you only pay when a targeted,prescreened seeker who in the very least meets ALL of your designatedcriteria and then actually clicks on your ad and visits your website,your exact position within any particular result list is far lessimportant than is your position among the group of companies(potentially including some of your competitors) directly targeting thesame exact people you are. That's where your position matters the most.That's where you'll want to “fight” for the best placement you canafford.

In addition, because in no case will bids of a lesser value appearabove/ahead of bids of a greater value in ANY result list provided toANY seeker, as per our rules, no advertiser with a lower bid than you(which bid is, as stated, on their own criteria set) will ever appearabove your listing in ANY result list. You invest more; you receivemore. No matter what your position on individual result lists are. It'sas simple as that.

11. All paid advertisers must have at least one criterion factor incommon with seeker and no factors which are contradictory with any ofseeker's criteria in order to appear on that seeker's result list. Eachgenerated result list contains any and all advertiser/providers havingat least one criterion factor in common with the seeker's criteria/data;where no criteria of any advertiser is a contradiction with any ofseeker's criteria/data. This is how we insure that seekers receive ONLYlistings (including yours!) which are relevant to each seeker (and toyour website/offer/products/services/etc); and none that aren't.

These rules are exemplary only. Other rules may be readily devised andapplied, individually or in combination with each other, as well. Forexample, as stated, instead of being the preferred sole determininglisting placement factor, a criteria (characteristics) set bid may inother embodiments be just one of two or more factors used to determineplacement within (a) result(s) list(s). By way of example and notlimitation, such other result list placement factors could include anads actual or projected popularity and/or click through rate (CTR),popularity and/or importance and/or desirability of various criteria tothe seeker(s) and/or advertiser(s) and/or system operator(s),relationship of an/the advertiser(s) and/or seeker to the systemoperator, advertiser cost of one or more of the criteria (i.e. where theinclusion of particular higher cost/higher value criteria results ineven higher result list placement), seekers geographic location relativeto one or more of the advertisers, credit standing of the advertisers(relative to each other and/or to some established standard, i.e., theirDUNN & BRADSTREET or FICO scores), length of time advertisers have beenutilizing system, total money spent (i.e. over a specific time periodand/or length of a contract) by advertisers, past match queries (i.e.frequency of, number/choices of ads/listings clicked on, time spentreviewing, number/types of ads/listings displayed), etc. Indeed, as cannow be appreciated, the placement factors (weighted and/orunweighted)/rules possibilities may be virtually limitless.

Accordingly, no effort will be made here to attempt to list everypossible set of weighted and/or unweighted factors and rules which maybe implemented and utilized to determine advertiser/advertisementplacement within seeker result lists. It is understood that numerousmodifications and variations may be readily devised given the above andherein description of the principles of the invention. All suchmodifications and variations are well within the spirit and scope ofthis invention, as it is defined in the claims.

Also, though not preferred embodiments, result lists may contain onlylistings where, e.g., a minimum of one—or some/any other numberof—criterion factors must match among/between the advertisers and/or theseekers (or where a certain number of particularly specified criteriafactors must match up) in order to appear on a result list. Or, in stillanother embodiment, positional bidding could be conducted notexclusively between advertisers sharing the same criteria set; butinstead be conducted between all advertisers who have one, two, three,four, etc; or at least one (or at least two, at least three, at leastfour, etc) criterion in common with each other, e.g., where eachindividual criterion an advertiser wanted to target could be biddedindividually, then “algorithmically combined” (or combined in some othermanner) to arrive at “current ranking” and “bid to become #1” figures.

Or, bidding could be conducted among all advertisers having at least agiven advertiser's criteria factor set. Or, some “point value”methodology could be employed (with or without algorithms), where valuesare assigned to each criterion factor based on each factor's relativeimportance/value to the set of criteria as a whole or to some otherexisting and/or created benchmark (or even correlated to each [other]factor individually for value determination). In still anotherembodiment, the advertisers could be required to select some minimumnumber of criteria for their criteria set; and/or have some criteria capon the number of criteria they may select. Or, their criteria set may berequired to contain one or more particular rule-required criteria (i.e.one or more zip codes, an income range, familial size, marital status,etc). Indeed, as can now be appreciated, the competitive biddingpossibilities may be virtually limitless.

Accordingly, no effort will be made here to attempt to list everypossible set of bidding and other factors and rules which may beutilized to determine advertiser/advertisement placement within seekerresult lists. It is understood that numerous modifications andvariations may be readily devised given the above and herein descriptionof the principles of the invention. All such modifications andvariations are well within the spirit and scope of this invention, as itis defined in the claims.

Referring now again to FIG. 7, where the bid amounts among the paidadvertisers are in monetarily ranked order; but not (excepting asbetween listings 710 c and 710 d) in “monetarily tight” sequentialorder. That is, though listed from highest bid to lowest based strictlyon bid amounts as is the preferred embodiment, the actual amountsbetween each listings' bids are neither $0.01 nor some othersystem-operator-required monetary distance apart. GM is in firstposition with a $7.00 bid, yet, while Toys R Us is in 2^(nd) position,their bid is not even $6.80+. The differences between 750 b and 750 c,and between 750 f and 750 g, are greater still. This is what resultlists will typically look like in a preferred embodiment of the presentinvention, where each advertiser simply bids only against otheradvertisers targeting the same exact criteria set as they are; notagainst other criteria sets, e.g., all advertisers sharing at least onecommon criterion but no conflicting criteria (which embodiment, whilepossible to implement, would be unwieldy, complicated and difficult tomanage given the large number of variables involved). The advertiserschose their bid amounts based on what positions they desired for theirown selected criteria set. Though irrelevant to the operation of thesystem; note that, over time, especially as the system's utilizationexpands beyond 100,000+advertiser/providers, these monetary variationsbetween positions on result lists will generally narrow.

Let us now take a look at how, working from the previously detailedresult list placement rules, the six paid listings of FIG. 7 may havecome to be listed in the order depicted (establishing scenarios so as todetermine exactly why they are listed so would limit the exploration ofmultiple aspects of the above rules and the present invention and istherefore not pertinent to our discussion here):

First; we know that all the listed advertisers have at least onecriterion factor in common with the seeker while having no criterionfactors which conflict with/contradict those of the seeker. Accordingly,one or more of these advertisers' criteria sets could, for example,consist entirely of any one of seeker's criterion factors, e.g. just“females,” just “age 37” (or “35-40” etc), just “those with$50,000-$74,999 total household income,” etc. Or two criterion factors,e.g. “female”+“35-40,” “CA resident+enjoys sports,” “female+enjoyssports,” etc. Or three factors, etc; up to this seekers total of sixcriteria factors. In effect, each individual advertiser's criteria setmay consist of any number of, in any combination, of this seeker's totalcriteria set (or more, as explained below), as depicted, consisting of:Female, age 37, $50,000-$74,999 THI, minor children in household, CAresident, and enjoys sports.

Contradicting criteria (which negate the listing of otherwisequalified-to-be-listed-advertisers in a result list for a given seeker)are those criteria which, by their nature, eliminate or “cancel out” oneor more of the unique demographic, geographic, and/or psychographicfactors unique to each seeker. Contradicting criteria, in effect, rendermeaningless these unique criteria factors. Using our example seeker forillustration; contradicting criteria would include if the seeker weremale, any age but age 37 (or any age range which does not include 37),had any total household income besides $50,000-$74,999, had no minorchildren in household, was a resident of any state other thanCalifornia, and who dislikes sports.

This means that, even if an advertiser's criteria set included female,age 37, $50 k-$74,999 THI, and′ A resident (5 of the seeker's 6criteria); but which also included those women who dislike sports; thisadvertiser's listing would not be included in this seeker's result list.“Dislikes Sports” contradicts “Likes Sports.” The seeker probablydoesn't want to see listings targeted to women like her but who don'tlike sports anyway; and in any case, this advertiser has alreadyindicated they want to reach only such women who do not like sports.They've already said, by their choice of criteria, that they want totarget—and only pay for—those 37 year old women with $50 k-$74,999 Tillhaving minor children in the household who live in California whodislike sports. Not those who like sports. In a similar manner; anadvertiser who is targeting age 37, CA resident, enjoys sports, Maleswould also not appear on this seeker's list, as a result of thecontradicting criterion “Male.” Nor would an advertiser appear whose setincludes female, age 37, minor children in household, enjoys sports; butwhere the household income is a contradicting $75,000.

Now, if any of these displayed advertisers' criteria sets had consistedof from one to six of this seeker's criteria factors plus one or moreadditional criterion factors (conflicting or not), under our operatingrules, their listing would not have appeared; due to advertisers desirefor greater specificity and/or different (though similar) targeting.Therefore, if one or more of the six paid advertisers' criteria sets hadconsisted of one or more from the set of: female, age 37, $50 k-$74,999THI, minor children in household, CA resident, and enjoys sports butalso included, e.g. “was in the military,” “enjoys reading,” “enjoyshorseback riding,” “has asthma,” “wants to buy a computer,” “has a dog,”etc, their listing would not have appeared. Because the advertiser(s)wouldn't be getting (all) what they were looking for in such a scenario,they don't have to (and wouldn't want to anyway) pay for a listing to bepresented to this particular seeker.

Now specifically (looking again to FIG. 7); perhaps General Motors istargeting (and so their criteria set therefore consists of) justfemales. Or females who live in California 37 year old females who enjoysports. Females with minor children in the household. Maybe they'relooking for 37 year old CA females with minor children. Or 37 year oldCA residents who enjoy sports (note here that, by GM indicating theiroffer is for men OR women [by not making “females” one of their chosencriteria], their listing will appear for both women and men who live inCA, are 37 years old, and who like sports). In all these scenarios, GMwould appear on the FIG. 7 seeker's result list. If, however, GMspecified “Males” as part of any of these otherwise “qualified” criteriasets; because such criteria would then contradict seeker's, theirlisting would not appear for this female seeker.

In the event GM's criteria set included from one to all six of the samesix criteria as this seeker plus one or more additional criteria, e.g.“Regularly uses their American Express Card,” “Listens to Music,” “Has aDog” etc; because GM is more specific (and targeting differently if lessthan six of their criteria matches seeker) in its targeting than isseeker, seeker would not see this GM listing. GM wants in this case tobe more targeted/specific than seeker is; making this seeker“ineligible” to know about GM's listing/offer. As this illustrates, inmany cases it may be in the advertisers best interest to specify justthe minimum number of targeting criteria as is truly consistent withtheir offer/listing/company in order to maximize the number of likelycustomers/clients for their products, services, and benefits. With thissystem's pinpoint targeting accuracy, it would be easy to get carriedaway by selecting more criteria than is really required; resulting inunnecessary lost business.

Why is GM in the first/top position in this seeker's list? Under ourrules, it's not because they've bid the most to be so; but because GMhas the highest bid amount of all the paid advertisers who qualified tobe displayed to this particular seeker. What GM's top positionadditionally tells us is that they also hold the top position amongthose advertisers targeting the same (and therefore who are “competing”with GM) criteria set as GM is. This is so because, since GM's criteriaset got them on this seeker's list, all other advertisers sharing thesame set as GM must by logic and necessity also appear in this seeker'slist, since, if GM “matches up” with this seeker, everyone sharing GM'scriteria set also “matches up” with this seeker. What we can't tell fromthis list, though, is just what GM's criteria set is; as it could be anytype and number of criteria which qualifies the seeker to view GM'slisting under our rules. Such targeting secrecy (and click fraudreducing) is obviously very valuable and desirable to advertisers; andis another of the many unique features and benefits of the presentinvention.

The remaining five paid advertisers of FIG. 7 are in the order they are,as with GM, only because of the bid amounts they are paying for whateverpositions each of them have selected in competition with otheradvertisers targeting the exact same respective criteria set as each ofthese five are. What we can discern, however (given that most seekerswill have result lists totaling some 100+listings once system has beenin operation for a short while), is that all five hold very high placesamong their specific, respective criteria set in order to show up in thetop six paid positions on this list. Indeed, given the amazingly widerange of available criteria sets for advertisers to choose from, thereis a good chance that each of these advertisers may actually hold thetop position among all companies competing for each advertisersrespective targeted criteria sets; just as we have determined GM is withtheir criteria set. Additionally, each of these six advertisers (thoughthey all have at least one non-contradictory criterion factor in commonwith the seeker), may have no criterion factors in common with eachother.

For example, GM could be targeting just females with their 0% financingoffer. Toys R Us, only 37 year olds (and so, males or females) for theiroffer. Amazon, just those with THI's of $50,000-$74,999 for theirs. 24Hour Fitness, only CA residents. PCH, just those with minor children inthe household. RealtyTruth.com, only those who enjoy sports. No criteriain common with each other; yet all would appear on this seeker's resultlist under the rules of this embodiment. All these advertisers able toreach their targets—and only their targets, no matter what criteria eachadvertiser selects. And with no one the wiser about what any of them aredoing or the markets they're each targeting. That's the profoundversatility of the present invention.

Unpaid listing 710 e is displayed among the paid listings. Preferably,such unpaid listings—especially those offering high-demand free or verylow cost products, services, and benefits such as is often the case withgovernment programs and the like—may be interspersed among the paidlistings. In this way, seekers remain highly motivated to review thecomplete list of all offered products, services, and benefits offered byall the advertisers. “Free” has proven itself over the years to be oneof the most powerful words in advertising/marketing. Interspersing suchlistings among the paid listings therefore puts “Free” to its best use;for the benefit of all; seekers, advertiser/providers, and the systemoperator/administrator. It is to be understood that the displayed PSBlistings are in no way limited to any particular type or number oflistings.

In a preferred embodiment, hyperlink 770 of FIG. 7 provides seekers withthe option to have their profile data saved by the system operator sothey won't have to complete the questionnaire(s) again in order togenerate the highly-desired updated result lists in the future.Preferably, they are also given the option to receive automatically (ormanually) generated result lists at regular time intervals of their (oroptionally system operator's) choosing. Given the dynamic,constantly-changing (e.g., often time-sensitive and availability/supplylimited) nature of both “everyday” as well as government product,service, and benefit offerings; when combined with the pinpointtargeting/matching of entities with the advertisers offerings asprovided by the present invention, such entity-requested updated andaccurate-to-the-minute result lists will likely be desired no less thanat least daily by these anxious—and curious—entities. Daily review andconsideration of “who's offering me/us/my company/my city what; when;and for how long” will one day be as ubiquitous as the morning newspaperor cup of coffee. While such data storage and automated updatingmethodologies are well know to the arts; the architecture for andprocedures to implement this data storage and automated updating are notconventional in the bidded-position, pay-for-performance system ofmatching providers with seekers as detailed herein.

Though shown in FIG. 7 for clarity and explanatory purposes, thepreferred embodiment is that the advertisers' bid amounts not be shown.Unlike as is the case with the Internet search field/industry, wherequestions have been regularly raised as to how the order of searchresults are determined (especially so in the early years of search); thecurrent invention has no such editorial integrity issues. Seekers knowwhat's “going on,” what to expect, and what the match result lists arerevealing to them. Other media doesn't display what advertisers havepaid for their placements; it preferably shouldn't be done with thepresent invention, either.

Also preferably, if two PSB listings with the same criteria sets alsohave the same bid amount, the bid that was received earlier in time willbe assigned the higher rank value. Alternatively, a minimum monetary bidincrement “distance” ($0.01, $0.05, etc) between bids to eliminate tiesfrom occurring may optionally be required.

It is to be understood that while presenting results lists to seekerswhereby the paid advertisers are listed strictly in highest-to-lowestdescending order based on their respective criteria-set bids is thepreferred embodiment (and, as stated, optionally yet preferably withunpaid listings being interspersed among the paid listings); in analternative embodiment, they may be listed and displayed in any orderdeemed suitable by the system operator, as long as the advertisers' bidsare at least one of the factors in the determination of the order inwhich the advertisers appear in results lists.

In another embodiment, the PSB listings may be categorized and presentedto the seeker in a “segmented-by-subject-matter” manner, e.g., under oneor more categories/classes and/or sub categories/sub classes such as“Housing,” “Employment,” “Education,” “Vacation/Recreation,”“Government,” etc. In a preferred embodiment of this option (ideally,subject to editorial review in order to insure relevancy) the categoriesin which their PSB listings/offerings are to appear may be self-selectedby the advertisers themselves (preferably via account management menu170 of FIG. 2). Alternatively, the system administrator may itselfcategorize the listings in this or a related manner, manually orautomatically. In the event such categorization is utilized, thepreferred embodiment is that, to the greatest extent possible in orderto maintain the relative “positional/monetary strength” of and betweenthe advertisers, rankings and listing positions change no more than isnecessary when instituting such categorization e.g., with theadvertisers continuing to be listed in descending order; highest bid atthe top, lowest at the bottom. Such categorization may make it easierfor some entity PSB seekers to review the products, services, andbenefits being offered to them by the providers/advertisers;particularly as, once launched, the inventions use continues its rapidexpansion in the years to come. Alternatively, any and all other varioustypes and forms of results ordering/positioning and presentation toseekers are also well within the scope of the present invention;including, as above, the option of having the listing order of theadvertisers not be based solely on the advertisers' bid amounts.

As shown in the campaign management menu 170 of FIG. 2, several choicesare presented to the advertiser to manage PSB criteria. First, in the“Change Bids” selection, the advertiser may change the bid of PSBcriteria currently in the account. The process invoked by the system forthe change bids function is shown in FIG. 8. After the advertiserindicates the intent to change bids by selecting the “Change Bids” menuoption, the system searches the user's account in the database anddisplays the PSB criteria(s) for the entire account or a defaultsubaccount in the advertiser's account, as shown in step 810. PSBcriteria may be grouped into subaccounts defined by the advertiser andmay comprise one or more PSB criteria. Only one subaccount may bedisplayed at a time. The display should also preferably permit theadvertiser to change the subaccount selected, as shown in step 815. Thescreen display will then show the PSB criteria for the selectedsubaccount, as indicated in step 820.

An example of screen display shown to the advertiser in step 810 isshown in FIG. 9 and will be discussed below. To change bids, theadvertiser user may specify new bids for PSB criteria for which theadvertiser already has an existing bid by entering a new bid amount intothe new bid input field for the PSB criteria. The advertiser-entered bidchanges are displayed to the advertiser at step 820 of FIG. 8 asdiscussed above. To update the bids for the display page, the advertiserrequests, at step 830 of FIG. 8, to update the result of changes. Theadvertiser may transmit such a request to the account management serverby a variety of means, including clicking on a button graphic.

As shown in step 840 of FIG. 8, upon receiving the request to update theadvertiser's bids, the system calculates the new current bid amounts forevery PSB criteria displayed, the rank values, and the bid amount neededto become, preferably, the highest ranked PSB listing matching the PSBcriteria field (optionally, the bid amount[s] needed to become then^(th) ranked PSB listing may [also] be provided to and selected by theadvertiser e.g., 3^(rd) highest, 5^(th) highest, 10^(th) highest,25^(th) highest, etc). Preferably, the system then presents a display ofchanges at step 850. After the user confirms the changes, the systemupdates the persistent state by writing the changes to the account inthe database.

The PSB criteria data is displayed in tabular format, with each PSBcriteria set corresponding to one row of the table 900. The PSB criteria902 is displayed in the leftmost column, followed by the current bidamount 904, and the current rank 905 of the PSB criteria. The currentrank is followed by a column entitled “Bid to become #1” 906, defined asthe bid amount needed to become the highest ranked for the displayed PSBcriteria set; and “New Bid” column 907. This rightmost column 907 ofeach row comprises one or more new bid input fields 908 which is setinitially to the current bid amount.

As shown in FIG. 9, the PSB criteria listings may be displayed as“subaccounts.” Each subaccount comprises one PSB criteria set/group,with multiple subaccounts residing within one advertiser account asneeded. Each subaccount may be displayed on a separate display pagehaving a separate page. The advertiser should preferably be able tochange the subaccount being displayed by manipulating a pull-down menu910 on the display shown in FIG. 9. In addition, PSB criteria sets thatcannot be displayed completely in one page may be separated into pageswhich may be individually viewed by manipulating pull-down menu 920.Again, the advertiser should preferably be able to change the pagedisplayed by clicking directly on a pull-down menu 920 located on thedisplay page of FIG. 9. The advertiser may specify a new bid for adisplayed PSB criteria set by entering a new bid amount into the new bidinput field 908 for the PSB criteria set. To update the result of theadvertiser-entered changes, the advertiser clicks on button graphic 912to transmit an update request to the account management server, whichupdates the bids as described above.

Many of the other selections listed in the “Account Management” menu 170of FIG. 2 function as variants of the “Change Bid” function describedabove. For example, if the advertiser selects the “Change Rank Position”option, the advertiser may be presented with a display similar to thedisplay of FIG. 9 used in the “Change Bid” function. However, in the“Change Rank Position” option, the “New Bid” field 907 would be replacedby a “New Rank” field, in which the advertiser enters the new desiredrank position for a PSB criteria. After the advertiser requests that theranks be updated, the system then calculates a new bid price by any of avariety of algorithms easily available to one skilled in the art. Forexample, the system may invoke a routine to locate the PSB criteria inthe match engine database having the desired rank/PSB criteriacombination, retrieve the associated bid amount of said combination, andthen calculate a bid amount that is N cents higher, where N=1, forexample. After the system calculates the new bid price and presents aread-only confirmation display to the advertiser, the system updates thebid prices and rank values upon receiving approval from the advertiser.

The “Modify Listing Component” selection on Account Management menu 170of FIG. 2 may also generate a display similar to the format of FIG. 9.When the advertiser selects the “Modify Listing Component” option, theadvertiser may input changes to the URL, title, or description of a PSBcriteria via web-based forms set up for each PSB criteria. Similar tothe process discussed above, the forms for the URL, title, anddescription fields may initially contain the old URL, title anddescription as default values. After the advertiser enters the desiredchanges, the advertiser may transmit a request to the system to updatethe changes. The system then displays a read-only confirmation screen,and then writes the changes to the persistent state (e.g., the useraccount database) after the advertiser approves the changes.

A process similar to those discussed above may be implemented forchanging any other peripheral options related to PSB listing; forexample, changing the matching options related to bidded PSB criteria.Any recalculations of bids or ranks required by the changes may also bedetermined in a manner similar to the processes discussed above.

In the “Delete Bidded PSB Criteria Term” option, the system retrievesall of the PSB listings in the account of the advertiser and displaysthe PSB listings in an organization and a format similar to the displayof FIG. 9. Each PSB criteria entry may include, instead of the new bidfield, a check box for the advertiser to click on. The advertiser wouldthen click to place a check (X) mark next to each PSB criteria to bedeleted, although any other means known in the art for selecting one ormore items from a list on a web page may be used. After the advertiserselects all the PSB criteria to be deleted and requests that the systemupdate the changes, the system preferably presents a read-onlyconfirmation of the requested changes, and updates the advertiser'saccount only after the advertiser approves the changes. The “deleted”PSB criteria is/are removed from the match engine database 36 and willnot appear in subsequent match requests. However, the PSB criteria willremain as part of the advertiser's account record for billing andaccount activity monitoring purposes.

In the “Add Bidded PSB Criteria” option, the system provides theadvertiser with a display having a number of entry fields correspondingto the elements of PSB criteria. The advertiser then enters into eachfield information corresponding to the respective PSB listing element,including the PSB criteria, the web site URL, the web site title, theweb site description, and the bid amount, as well as any other relevantinformation. After the advertiser has completed entering the data andhas indicated thus to the system, the system returns a read-onlyconfirmation screen to the advertiser. The system then creates a new PSBlisting instance and writes it into the account database and the matchengine database upon receiving approval from the advertiser.

Preferably, the “Account Management” menu 170 of FIG. 2 provides aselection for the advertiser to “Get Suggestions On Bidded PSBCriteria”. In this case, the advertiser enters (a) bidded PSB criteriainto a form-driven query box (or other known means for selecting one ormore from a given set of choices) displayed to the advertiser. Thesystem reads the PSB criteria entered by the advertiser and generates alist of additional related PSB criteria to assist the advertiser inlocating criteria relevant to the content of the advertiser's web siteand/or offerings. Preferably, the additional criteria are generatedusing methods such as a string matching algorithm applied to a databaseof bidded criteria and/or a thesaurus database implemented in software.The advertiser may select criteria to bid on from the list generated bythe system. In that case, the system displays to the advertisers theentry fields described above for the “Add Bidded PSB Criteria”selection, with a form for entering a PSB listing for eachcriterion/criteria (set) selected. Preferably, the selected criteria isinserted as a default value into the form for each PSB listing. Defaultvalues for the other PSB listing components may also be inserted intothe forms if desired.

The “Account Management” menu 170 of FIG. 2 also preferably providesadvertisers with a “Project Expenses” selection. In this selection, theadvertiser specifies a PSB listing or subaccount for which theadvertiser would like to predict a “daily run rate” and “days remainingto expiration.” The system calculates the projections based on a costprojection algorithm, and displays the predictions to the advertiser ona read-only screen. The predictions may be calculated using a number ofdifferent algorithms known in the art. However, since the cost of a PSBlisting is calculated by multiplying the bid amount by the total numberof clicks received by the PSB listing at that bid amount during aspecified time period, every cost projection algorithm must generallydetermine an estimated number of clicks per month (or other specifiedtime period) for a PSB listing. The clicks on a PSB listing may betracked via implementation of a software counting mechanism as is wellknown in the art. Clicks for all PSB listings may be tracked over time,this data may be used to generate estimated numbers of clicks per monthoverall, and for individual PSB criteria. For a particular criteria, anestimated number of match requests per day is determined and ismultiplied by the cost of a click. This product is then multiplied by aratio of the average number of clicks over the average number ofimpressions for the rank of the PSB listing in question to obtain adaily run rate. The current balance may be divided by the daily run rateto obtain a projected number of days to exhaustion or “expiration” ofaccount funds.

One embodiment of the present invention bases the cost projectionalgorithm on a simple predictor model that assumes that every PSBcriteria performs in a similar fashion. This model assumes that the rankof the advertiser's PSB listing will remain constant and not fluctuatethroughout the month. This algorithm has the advantages of being simpleto implement and fast to calculate. The predictor model is based on thefact that the click through rate, e.g. the total number of clicks, orreferrals, for a particular PSB listing, is considered to be a functionof the rank of the PSB listing. The model therefore assumes that theusage curve of each PSB criteria, that is, the curve that results whenthe number of clicks on a PSB listing is plotted against the rank of thePSB listing, is similar to the usage curve for all PSB criteria. Thus,known values extrapolated over time for the sum of all clicks for allcriteria, the sum of all clicks at a given rank for all criteria, andthe sum of all clicks for the selected criteria may be employed in asimple proportion to determine the total of all clicks for the givenrank for the selected criteria. The estimated daily total of all clicksfor the selected criteria at the selected rank is then multiplied by theadvertiser's current bid amount for the criteria at that rank todetermine a daily expense projection. In addition, if particularcriteria or classes of criteria are known to differ markedly from thegeneral pattern, correction values specific to the criteria, advertiser,or other parameter may be introduced to fine-tune the projected costestimate.

Finally, the “Account Management” menu 170 of FIG. 2 provides severalselections to view information related to the advertiser's campaigns.The “View Subaccount Information” selection displays read-onlyinformation related to the selected subaccount. The “View PSB CriteriaList” selection displays the list of the advertiser's selected criteriaalong with the corresponding URLs, bid price, and rank, with thecriteria preferably grouped by subaccount. The advertiser may also viewcurrent top bids for a set of criteria selected from a list of criteriafrom a read-only display generated by the system upon receiving therequested criteria from the advertiser.

For an advertiser who requires a more comprehensive report of PSBlisting activity, the “View Report” option may be selected from theAdvertiser Main Page 120 of FIG. 2. In an embodiment of the presentinvention, the “View Report” options generate reports comprehensive forup to one year preceding the current date. For example, daily reportsare available for the each of the immediately preceding 7 days, weeklyreports for the preceding four weeks, monthly reports for the precedingtwelve months, and quarterly reports for the last four quarters.Additional reports may also be made available depending on advertiserinterest.

Other predefined report types may include activity tracked during thefollowing time periods: Since Inception of the Account, Year To Date,Yearly, Quarter To Date, Month To Date, and Week to Date. ReportCategories may include a Detail Report, viewable by Advertiser Account,by PSB Criteria, and by URL, and a Summary Report, viewable byAdvertiser Account and by Subaccount. The reports may includeidentification data such as advertiser account and subaccount name, thedates covered by the report and the type of report. In addition, thereports may include key PSB listing account data such as currentbalance, pending current balance, average daily account debit, and runrate.

Furthermore, the reports may also include key data, such as: PSBcriteria, URLs, bids, current ranks, and number of clicks, number ofmatch requests done for the PSB criteria, number of impressions (timesthat the PSB listing appeared in a PSB match result list), and clickthrough rate (defined as Number of Clicks/Number of Impressions).Preferably, the report is available in at least HTML view options forviewing via a browser program, printing, or downloading. Note, however,that other view options may be made available, such as Adobe Acrobat,PostScript, ASCII text, spreadsheet interchange formats (e.g., CSV,tab-delimited), and other well-known formats.

When the advertiser has selected the “View Report” option, the systeminvokes a function which displays a list of available report types,dates, categories, and view options. The system preferably creates areport instance with the following fields, all of which are initiallyset to null: report type, report date, report category, and view option.Once the advertiser has defined the parameters described above, thesystem invokes a function to generate the requested report, based on theadvertiser-set parameters, and to display the report, based on the viewoption parameter.

Finally, a preferred embodiment of the present invention implements anoption for context specific help that the advertiser may request at anytime the advertiser is logged in. The help option may be implemented asa small icon or button located on the system generated display page. Theadvertiser may click on the icon or button graphic on the display pageto request help, upon which the system generates and displays a helppage keyed to the function of the particular display the user isviewing. The help may be implemented as separate display pages, asearchable index, dialog boxes, or by any other methods well known inthe art.

Given the above description of an overall approach to the Match EngineMarketing (Paid Match) service of the present invention, specificnon-claim-limiting examples of different criteria (characteristics) bidsets by various potential advertiser/providers will now be described:

Example I

General Motors decides to test a special financing program ONLY toeveryone who currently owns a non-GM automobile AND who lives in FloridaAND who has minor children at home AND who is 18-49 years old AND liveswithin 20 miles of one of their Florida dealerships. This criteria setcosts them only $7 for the top position, for each of theirclicks/referrals; a bargain considering their average lead cost fortheir dealer network runs almost $80. Because they were able to pinpointtarget their offer in this way, the millions of other existing (andpotential) GM customers weren't upset that they weren't offered the samespecial financing this group was. As a result of how othermarketing/media options operate, until now, this “non-targeted marketawareness” and resultant anger and disappointment was often a bigheadache for GM. Not anymore.

Example II

Sees Candy geographically pin-point offers a buy-one-get-one-free coupononly to people living in those four zip codes closest to each of their432 stores AND who haven't bought Sees candy in the last 12 months. Theypay just $3.55 (for criteria set position number five) for eachclick/lead. Since only two boxes of candy pays for both the lead and thecoupon; given the excellent repeat and word-of-mouth sales new customersgenerate, this is the most affordable advertising they've ever done.

Example III

Publisher's Clearing House is looking for a new way to bring insubscribers for their 100+magazine and product suppliers and decides touse the system for an AB split test; something they're well familiarwith. To do so, they divide up the 40,000 national zip codes in half (onan “every other one” basis to insure result accuracy), making twodifferent offers to each of the two sets of recipients. Paying only$2.68 (list position #13) per click/lead, they discover to theiramazement that their ROI is almost three times that of direct mail.

Example IV

Amazon.com decides to take their 25 top selling $50-$200 non-bookproducts and tailor a criteria set unique to each product, based on theprofile of those most likely to have bought each product in the past.The results? Paying just $3.10/click/lead for a positional average offive over all the products; their national advertising cost of sale isrunning 44-76% (depending on product) less than any other media they'veever used before.

Example V

Tiffany has designed an exclusive new line of high-end ($25,000+/piece)jewelry they want to sell over the Internet and by phone to those notliving within driving distance of one of their stores; yet are tired ofall the logistical difficulties of placing ads in overpriced,multi-month lead times, hard-to-measure-results, hit-or-miss magazines.Instead, they pay only $9.72 for the #1 spot with the followingcriteria: Household income of $100,000+AND have high-speed Internetaccess at home or work AND already own at least $50,000 in jewelry ANDhave a net worth of at least $500,000 excluding their principleresidence. The result? Though it's early in the campaign, their cost ofsale is averaging less than a third of what they usually spend—just$3,500 per piece. While this amount may sound high, given that thesepieces average a whopping—100% markup (as is common in the industry),it's actually almost like printing money.

Example VI

A small, local company, Wonderful Weddings, only provides their servicesto those in the Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village, and Agoura areas.Accordingly, they select the following criteria: Zip Codes 91359, 91360,91361, 91362, and 91301+Females (men rarely make wedding decisions, sowhy pay to reach them?)+Getting married within the next six months (howmany newspaper readers does this attribute ever apply to?). Since theyaverage $15,000 in products and services sold per wedding, they're onlytoo happy to be paying $2.97/click/lead (criteria set position 7) toreach only their target market.

Example VII

AT&T is launching an exciting new DSL service to the business communityand wants to move quickly before their tough competitors get wind of it.As a test, they initially target every 10th zip code (an N^(th) sort);giving them 4000 zip codes worth of businesses at a B2B cost of just$8.32 per click/lead (since they want to reach all businesses regardlessof employee count, revenue, facilities location(s), industry sector,products/services offered, etc, they've decided to not use any otherfirmographic criteria on this offer). This buys them the top position.They realize within the first 15 days that this new (avg.$1,000+/year/business) service is their biggest winner yet, and soimmediately roll their offer out to all 40,000 US zip codes; now paying$8.57 per click/lead. By the time their competitors get hold of theoffer and try to come up with something to counter AT&T, it's alreadytoo late. SBC, Verizon, Southwest Bell, and the rest never knew what hitthem.

As these are just a few examples of the virtually limitless usepossibilities for the present invention, it is to be understood thatthese Examples are of course not intended to, and should accordingly notbe used to, either limit the scope of the claims or to limit theinvention to either any particular embodiment(s) or to (a) preciseform(s).

CONCLUSION

While the invention has been described in connection with what ispresently considered to be the most practical and preferred embodiment,it is to be understood that the invention is not to be limited to thedisclosed embodiment. This description is not intended to be exhaustiveor to limit the invention to the precise form disclosed.

As should now be readily apparent, the unobvious and unexpected,superior results present invention clearly and convincingly takes thematching of advertisers with their entity targets to a whole new andexciting, powerfully effective, highly profitable and premier level byproviding the world's first and only real or substantially real time payfor performance characteristics-targeted marketing vehicle. As theground-breaking GoTo patent (U.S. Pat. No. 6,269,361) did for its new“paid search” industry; the present invention is itself the foundationalforce set to lead the way to another exciting new national andinternational industry. Welcome to the birth of revolutionary newfrictionless advertising, to be heretofore known as Match EngineMarketing™/Paid Match™.

The many features and advantages of the groundbreaking present inventionare apparent from the detailed, clarity-and-understanding-providingspecification. Furthermore, since numerous modifications, variations,changes, and alterations will readily occur to those skilled in the artsonce this invention is known to the arts, it is not desired that thepresent invention be limited to the exact constructions, operations, andimplementations illustrated and described herein; and accordingly, allsuitable modifications, variations, and equivalents which may beresorted to are intended to fall within the true spirit, concept, andscope of the invention and its claims and their legal equivalents;including where any bidding on, and/or payment(s) based on, entitycriteria/characteristics is resorted to.

What is claimed is:
 1. Means for the auctioning of and/or bidding on ofentity criteria.